2Il|f  Ittinerattg  of  QUitrago 


A  Psychological  Interpretation 
of  Mysticism 


A  DISSERTATION 

SUBMITTED  TO  THE  FACULTY  OF  THE  GRADUATE  SCHOOL  OF  ARTS 

AND  LITERATURE  IN  CANDIDACY  FOR  THE  DEGREE  OF 

DOCTOR  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

(department  of  philosophy) 


BY 
CLARENCE  HERBERT  HAMILTON 


"^m 


A  Private  Edition 

Distributed  by 

The  University  of  Chicago  Libraries 

1916 


^^.^l  J 


BV  5083  .H35  1916 
Hamilton,  Clarence  H.  1886-i 
A  psychological 
interpretation  of  mysticis 


Qllff  llnroprfliJg  of  Ollitragn 


A  Psychological  Interpretation 
of  Mysticism 


A  DISSERTATION 

SUBMITTED  TO  THE  FACULTY  OF  THE  GRADUATE  SCHOOL  OF  ARTS 

AND  LITERATURE  IN  CANDIDACY  FOR  THE  DEGREE  OF 

DOCTOR  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

(department  of  philosophy) 


BY 
CLARENCE  HERBERT  HAMILTON 


A  Private  Edition 

Distributed  by 

The  University  of  Chicago  Libraries 

1916 


i.IBR. 


«*R#6E|i1rXiD  BY 


PREFACE 

The  aim  of  this  study  is  an  interpretation  of  mysticism  rather  than 
the  presentation  of  fresh  facts  of  mystical  experience.  The  examples 
analysed  are  well  known  and  there  is  a  frank  rehance  at  certain  points 
upon  the  interpretations  of  leading  thinkers  in  the  field.  The  special 
student  will  be  able  to  trace  the  ideas  of  James  and  Leuba  and  Coe  in 
various  places. 

For  the  writer  the  preparation  of  this  thesis  has  been  more  than  the 
mere  mechanical  fulfillment  of  an  academic  requirement.  It  represents 
an  attempt  on  his  part,  whatever  may  be  its  success,  to  draw  together 
in  a  more  or  less  systematic  conspectus,  for  the  purpose  of  clarifying  his 
own  thought,  ideas  gathered  from  various  sources  on  a  subject  in  which 
he  is  genuinely  interested.  Although  the  facts  are  not  new  it  is  hoped 
that  the  perspective  in  which  they  are  viewed  may  not  be  without  some 
fresh  suggestion  to  the  reader  who  is  patient  enough  to  follow  through 
to  the  end. 

For  the  psychological  angle  of  approach  the  writer  is  indebted  to 
Professor  E.  S.  Ames,  honored  friend  and  teacher,  whose  unfailing  sym- 
pathy and  encouragement  have  been  a  constant  stimulus  in  the  task. 
Gratitude  is  further  due  to  Professor  James  H.  Tufts  for  wise  counsel  in 
the  mechanics  of  construction,  and  for  kindly  and  helpful  criticism. 
Ideas  suggested  by  courses  with  Professors  G.  H.  Mead  and  A.  W.  Moore 
have  aided  materially  in  the  development  of  certain  points. 

C.  H.  Hamilton. 
Nanking,  China,  1915. 


CONTENTS 

.   Page 
Introduction 7 

Chapter  I 
The  Factors  Involved  in  Mystical  Development U 

Chapter  II 
The  Development  of  Neo-Platonic  Mysticism 27 

Chapter  III 
The  Case  of  St.  Teresa 33 

Chapter  IV 
The  Mysticism  of  Blaise  Pascal 58 

Chapter  V 
Conclusion 73 


Bibliography. 


84 


A  PSYCHOLOGICAL   INTERPRETATION   OF   MYSTICISM 

Introduction 

It  is  not  extraordinary  that  our  time  should  witness  a  marked  revival 
of  interest  in  the  whole  subject  of  mysticism.  Of  recent  years  there 
has  been  a  growing  tendency  in  religious  literature  to  stress  with  increas- 
ing insistency  the  world  of  the  "inner"  or  the  "heart"  life.  Much  of 
modern  apologetic  takes  its  stand  upon  the  authority  of  personal,  imme- 
diate experience  of  religious  values,  as  Professor  Leuba  especially  points 
out.^  There  is  an  astonishing  popularity  in  such  movements  as  Christian 
Science,  New  Thought  and  Theosophy — movements  which,  while  dif- 
fering in  detail  of  teaching  and  practice,  are  yet  alike  in  that  they  all 
endeavor  to  bring  about  concrete  results  by  the  conscious  control,  in 
some  way  or  other,  of  the  mental  processes.  Again,  in  the  established, 
historical,  religious  institutions  there  is  noticeably  less  of  an  appeal  to 
external  authority,  in  favor  of  a  presentation  of  religion  as  a  ministrant 
to  fundamental  interior  needs.  The  call  for  directness  and  immediacy 
in  religious  experience  is  sounded  on  every  hand.  It  is  in  accord  with 
the  tendency  of  the  time,  therefore,  that  within  the  last  few  years  the 
literature  on  mysticism  should  increase  in  volume.  On  the  shelves  of 
booksellers  we  see  an  unusual  number  of  volumes  devoted  to  mystical 
subjects.  These  have  not  been  confined  alone  to  scholarly  treatises,  of 
which  there  are  always  a  few  coming  off  the  press,  but  have  comprised 
as  well  popular  historical  accounts  of  the  great  mystics,  reprints  and 
excerpts  from  their  writings,  and  popular  expositions  of  mystic  doctrine, 
seeking  to  make  it  especially  applicable  to  our  "  over-materiahstic," 
"over-scientific"  time.  Nor  have  articles  been  wanting  in  the  common 
periodicals,  varying  from  examples  of  extravagant  fantasy  to  really 
thoughtful  attempts  at  just  estimation  and  appraisal  of  the  worth  of 
mysticism.  All  of  this  increased  talking  and  thinking  about  mysticism 
comes  about  undoubtedly  because  the  mystic  is  so  thorough-going  an 
example  of  devotion  to  the  well-being  of  the  "inner  life."  He,  if  any 
one,  has  striven  whole-heartedly  to  control  his  psychic  processes  with  a 
view  to  the  attainment  of  a  superior  state  of  consciousness. 

But  along  with  the  revival  of  interest  in  mysticism  there  is  revived 
also  much  of  the  older  method  of  interpretation  of  mysticism  which 
separates  it  in  kind  from  the  rest  of  human  experience.     We  find  that 

'  Leuba,  J.  H.,  A  Psychological  Study  of  Religion,  Chap.  XI. 


8  A  PSYCHOLOGICAL  INTERPRETATION  OF  MYSTICISM 

the  experience  of  the  mystic  is  not  infrequently  considered  to  be  of  so 
unique  a  character  that  its  explanation  must  involve  the  assumption  of 
some  supernormal  power  or  faculty,  the  understanding  and  appreciation 
of  which  cannot  be  attained  by  the  nonmystical  person  unless  he  turns 
mystic  and  goes  through  the  mystical  experience  himself.  This  inter- 
pretation has  been  uniformly  the  view  of  the  mystics  themselves  and 
has  often  been  repeated  by  those  who  in  one  way  or  another  have  come 
under  the  spell  of  mystical  ideas.  But  it  is  a  view  which  has  come  down 
to  us  from  a  time  when  categories  were  lacking  by  means  of  which  to 
link  the  mystical  to  other  experience.  With  the  aid  of  the  biological 
and  psychological  conceptions  of  recent  years  the  modern  mind  is  inclined 
to  feel  that  the  phenomenon  in  question  may  be  brought  within  the  pale 
of  understood  processes.  Psychology  particularly  has  been  at  much 
pains  to  develop  a  conceptual  technique  with  which  to  understand  and 
deal  with  the  phenomena  of  the  mental  life  and  is  not  willing  to  fall 
back  upon  transcendental  explanations  of  mysticism  without  first 
exhausting  every  resource  available  in  the  attempt  to  see  it  in  terms  of 
understood  functions.  It  is  in  sympathy  with  the  psychological  view 
that  the  present  study  has  been  undertaken.  It  is  not  feared  that  the 
assimilation  of  the  mystic  experience  to  the  more  commonly  appreciated 
phases  of  human  conduct  will  lessen  reverence  or  rob  us  necessarily  of 
a  sense  of  the  mystery  and  wonder  of  the  universe.  But  it  is  believed 
that  a  psychological  understanding  of  the  phenomenon  will  enable  us  to 
shift  our  wonder  from  the  merely  exceptional  to  the  marvelousness  of 
the  whole  structure  of  things  where  it  really  belongs.  We  shall  there- 
fore try  to  escape  all  such  terms  as  "instinct  for  transcendence"  or 
"mystical  faculty"  or  "mystical  element"  in  human  nature  and  shall 
make  use  of  terminology  with  which  we  are  famiUar  in  other  than  mys- 
tical considerations. 

Apropos  of  the  contention  that  one  must  first  be  a  mystic  before  he 
can  talk  intelligently  about  mysticism,  a  few  words  may  be  said.  We 
venture  to  believe  that  a  mystic  is  not  necessarily  in  a  better  position 
to  understand  his  experience  theoretically  because  he  is  closer  to  it  than 
any  one  else.  The  psychology  of  our  more  complex  situations  cannot 
be  really  understood  by  any  of  us  when  we  are  in  the  midst  of  them. 
In  the  height  of  anger  or  great  joy  or  overwhelming  sorrow  we  are  too 
much  occupied  with  the  experience  itself  to  put  ourselves  in  an  analytical 
frame  of  mind.  So  it  often  happens  under  such  circumstances  that  the 
advice  and  understanding  of  our  onlooking  friends  serve  us  better  than 
our  own  judgment.     Further,  if  there  is  present  a  person  who  has  ob- 


INTRODUCTION  9 

served  many  people  under  a  stress  similar  to  our  own,  his  understanding 
of  the  situation  is  apt  to  surpass  both  our  own  understanding  and  that 
of  our  friends.  Similarly  the  significance  of  a  whole  life  or  career  can 
be  better  interpreted  by  an  outsider  than  by  him  who  lives  it.  In  the 
case  of  the  mystic  it  is  not  at  all  unthinkable  that  the  study  of  many 
cases  of  mystical  experience  and  their  comparison  with  similar  experi- 
ences, normal  and  abnormal,  in  other  phases  of  human  conduct  may 
yield  a  real  explanation  which  it  is  quite  beyond  the  capacity  of  the 
mystic  to  formulate.  The  modern  psychologist  has  at  his  hand  a  large 
body  of  cases  of  mystical  experience,  accumulated  through  the  centuries, 
which  can  be  subjected  to  modern  methods  of  investigation.  He  has 
also  the  benefit  of  those  studies  which  have  been  directed  of  recent  years 
upon  the  obscurer  phases  of  the  mental  life — the  operations  of  the  sub- 
conscious— the  study  of  which  has  thrown  light  upon  a  great  variety  of 
hitherto  inexplicable  phenomena,  normal  as  well  as  abnormal.  Thus 
equipped,  he  is  certainly  in  a  much  more  advantageous  position  to  give 
a  rational  account  of  the  mystic's  experience  than  the  latter  is  himself, 
even  though  he  has  not  gone  the  lengths  of  the  mystic  career.  As 
Leuba  has  remarked  concerning  the  scientific  investigator  of  religious 
phenomena  generally,  "If  the  psychologist  has  passed  through  the 
experiences  he  discusses,  so  much  the  better  for  him.  If  he  has  not, 
he  is  no  more  disqualified  for  religious  studies  than  for  the  psychological 
analysis  of  nonreligious  experiences  which  have  never  been  his — a  crime 
of  passion,  the  mental  state  of  a  captain  of  industry  struggling  with  his 
rivals,  or  any  form  whatever  of  mental  disorder." 

The  psychological  viewpoint  from  which  this  interpretation  of 
mysticism  is  undertaken  is  the  functional  one,  the  essential  idea  of  which 
is  that  all  mental  processes  are  means  by  which  the  organism  interacts 
with  its  environment  in  a  way  to  further  the  total  ongoing  of  life  both 
individual  and  social.  In  accordance  with  this  conception  we  shall, 
throughout,  be  speaking  of  the  mystic  experience  as  a  mode  of  adjust- 
ment and  reaction  under  the  stimulus  of  varying  kinds  of  social  environ- 
ment. More  particularly  we  shall  study  the  operations  of  three  great 
factors  which  seem  to  us  sufficiently  important  to  be  the  carrying  cate- 
gories of  the  discussion.  These  are  the  human  instincts,  sensitivity  of 
temperament,  and  social  environment.  A  general  exposition  of  these 
in  relation  to  the  development  of  the  mystical  experience  is  given  in  the 
first  chapter. 

In  the  second,  third  and  fourth  chapters  an  illustrative  analysis  is 
made  of  these  factors  as  they  operate  in  three  cases  of  mystical  experi- 


10  A  PSYCHOLOGICAL  INTERPRETATION  OF  MYSTICISM 

ence,  1.  in  Neo-Platonic  mysticism,  2.  in  the  life  of  St.  Teresa,  and 
3.  in  the  life  of  Pascal.  In  the  two  latter  cases  we  shall  see  the  inter- 
action of  all  the  three  factors.  Neo-Platonism  will  reveal  chiefly  the 
influence  of  the  social  environment.  In  a  fifth  chapter  we  shall  return 
again  to  the  discussion  of  the  general  theory  with  further  amplification 
and  conclusions. 


CHAPTER  I 

The  Factors  Involved  in  Mystical  Development 

Taking  up  individually  the  factors  which  we  consider  salient  in 
mystical  development  we  recognize,  in  the  first  place,  that  the  mystic 
comes  into  the  world  with  the  same  dower  of  instincts  which  has  been 
the  heritage  of  man  at  all  times.  The  very  influence  which  he  exerts  over 
others  is  evidence  of  the  fact  that  his  psychic  constitution  comprises 
those  universal  impulses  which  can  be  sympathetically  appreciated  by 
the  ordinary  individual.  And  not  only  do  others  sense  the  presence  of 
these  tendencies  in  the  mystic  but  there  is  reason  to  believe  that  he 
himself  is  unusually  conscious  of  them  because  of  his  attempt  to  inhibit 
most  of  them.  St.  John  of  the  Cross  tells  us  that  the  mystic  way  at 
certain  junctures  ''is  attended  with  heavy  trials  and  temptations  of 
sense  of  long  continuance,  in  some  longer  than  in  others:  for  to  some  is 
sent  the  angel  of  Satan,  the  spirit  of  impurity,  to  buflfet  them  with  horri- 
ble temptations  of  the  flesh,  to  trouble  their  minds  with  filthy  thoughts, 
and  their  imaginations  with  representations  of  sin  most  vividly  depicted: 
which,  at  times,  becomes  an  affliction  more  grievous  than  death, "^  The 
same  author  remarks  in  another  work  that  "one  only  desire  doth  God 
allow,  and  suffer,  in  His  presence,  that  of  perfectly  observing  His  law 
and  of  carrying  the  cross  of  Christ."''  But  the  effort  to  purge  the  soul 
of  all  other  desires  in  favor  of  this  one  has  the  natural  psychological  ten- 
dency to  strengthen  the  desires  in  the  very  thwarting  of  them.  Hence 
we  find  the  mystics  in  certain  stages  of  their  experience  struggling  with 
evils  that  represent  almost  the  entire  list,  generally  received,  of  human 
instincts.  Curiosity  is  combated  as  a  prying  into  things  unlawful. 
Acquisitiveness  appears  as  avarice  and  covetousness.^  St.  Teresa  found 
it  necessary  to  check  her  sociability.  Al  Ghazzali  quitted  his  professor- 
ial post  in  Bagdad  because  he  found  in  his  work  only  the  motive  of  self- 
assertion.  John  of  the  Cross  gives  a  series  of  rules  for  the  "mortifying" 
and  "calming"  of  the  four  "natural  passions,  joy,  hope,  fear  and  grief. "^ 
St.  Catherine  of  Genoa  checked  affection  for  relatives.  "By  nature 
courteous  and  affable,"  writes  Baron  von  Htigel,  "she  would  do  great 

2  John  of  the  Cross,  Dark  Night  of  the  Soul,  Bk.  I,  Chap.  XIV,  par.  2. 

3  Ascent  oj  Mount  Carniel,  Bk.  I,  Chap.  V,  par.  8. 

*  Witness  the  necessity  of  giving  up  little  things  such  as  a  pretty  rosary,  a  book, 
some  special  articles  of  clothing,  etc.,  which  is  not  infrequently  felt. 

*  Ascent  of  Mount  Carmel,  Bk.  I,  Chap.  XIII,  par.  5. 


V        liNION    ^<^^ 

THEOLOGICAL 

SEMINARY 


12  A  PSYCHOLOGICAL  INTERPRETATION  OF  MYSTICISM 

violence  to  herself  by  conversing  as  little  as  possible  with  her  relatives 
when  they  visited  her,  and,  as  to  anything  further,  paying  heed  neither 
to  herself  nor  to  them:  and  she  acted  thus  for  the  purpose  of  self-con- 
quest."^ Of  St.  Francis  of  Assisi  it  is  said  that  in  combating  sensual 
desire  he  plunged  his  naked  body  into  a  snow-heap.'' 

We  might  multiply  indefinitely  these  examples  of  the  keen  awareness, 
on  the  part  of  the  mystics,  of  the  various  human  instincts.  But  it  is 
not  necessary  to  go  into  detail  to  prove  that  the  same  equipment  of 
tendencies  to  act  serves  the  mystic  in  solving  his  problems  no  less  than 
it  serves  other  people.  That  these  tendencies  play  a  great  role  in  his 
adjustment  of  himself  to  his  universe  no  one  is  apt  to  dispute.  But  it 
is  essential  to  state  further  that  if  the  mystic  has  no  less  than  the  ordinary 
group  of  fundamental  instincts  on  which  to  develop  an  organized  mode 
of  reaction  to  his  environment  he  yet  has  no  more  than  the  usual  set. 
Neither  does  he  have  peculiar  access  to  some  special  instinct  or  faculty 
for  transcendent  insight  which  lies  dormant  in  all  persons  but  dis- 
coverable only  by  a  few.  We  are  told  frequently  that  the  mystic  has 
some  sense  beyond  the  normal  instincts  which  is  his  unique  instrument 
for  entering  a  range  of  experience  of  supreme  value.  It  is  an  "instinct 
for  transcendence."^  But  such  a  conception  harks  back  to  the  older 
psychology  which  considered  the  mind  to  be  made  up  of  several  faculties 
working  more  or  less  independently  of  each  other.  It  makes  the  mis- 
take of  reading  back  into  the  organism  qualities  of  the  object  with  which 
the  organism  is  related.  On  this  basis  a  special  instinct  would  have 
to  be  postulated  for  every  form  of  unusual  activity.  There  would  have 
to  be  an  artistic  instinct  to  account  for  the  artistic  genius,  an  especially 
developed  business  instinct  for  the  business  genius,  a  billiard  instinct  for 
the  expert  billiard  player,  a  military  instinct  for  the  great  general,  in 
fact,  a  special  instinct  for  every  highly  specialized  activity  which  man 
exhibits.  Then  if  we  further  make  the  assumption  that  each  one  of 
these  numerous  instincts  is  latent  in  every  individual  it  will  readily  be 
seen  that  we  have  here  a  mode  of  explanation  that  is  both  cumbersome 
and  unilluminating.  PVom  the  point  of  view  of  functional  psychology 
the  more  helpful  procedure  is  to  recognize  that  each  of  these  activities, 

*  Mystical  Element  of  Religion,  Vol.  I,  p.  131. 

^  See  Bonaventura's  Life  of  St.  Francis,  Chap.  V,  par.  4. 

*See  Evelyn  Underbill's  Mysticism,  p.  59.  "The  history  of  mysticism  demon- 
strates plainly  enough  that  there  is  developed  in  some  men  another  sort  of  conscious- 
ness, another  'sense',  beyond  the  normal  qualities  of  the  self."  Also  see  her  The 
Mystic  way.  Chap.  I,  pp.  3-14  on  "The  Instinct  for  Transcendence." 


THE  FACTORS  INVOLVED  IN  MYSTICAL  DEVELOPMENT  13 

art,  business,  billiard  playing,  military  activity,  as  well  as  the  dealings 
of  the  mystic  with  his  absolute  or  transcendent,  evokes  its  characteristic 
attitude:  which  attitude,  in  turn,  is  to  be  considered  as  involving  all 
the  psychological  functions  and  not  as  being  the  product  of  any  one  of 
them  alone.  That  is  to  say,  the  native  instincts,  in  the  case  of  the 
artist,  through  the  character  of  their  combination  and  through  the  train- 
ing he  has  given  them,  all  function  most  efficiently  in  relation  to  his  art. 
Similarly  with  regard  to  the  mystic,  the  particular  quality  of  his  experi- 
ence is  the  product  of  the  special  organization  of  the  ordinary  instincts 
combined  with  the  training  which  he  gives  them  either  consciously  or 
unconsciously  in  acting  under  the  influence  of  his  environment.  There 
is,  therefore,  no  need  to  assume  a  unique  instinct  for  mystical  apprehen- 
sion, either  as  the  special  gift  to  particular  individuals  or  as  a  latent 
possession  of  all  persons. 

But  if  we  do  not  ascribe  the  mystic  experience  to  the  operation  of 
some  secret  mystic  sense,  we  must  yet  recognize  one  native  factor  which 
cannot  be  left  out  of  account,  the  factor,  namely,  of  temperament.  The 
mystic,  wherever  we  have  been  able  to  learn  of  his  personal  life,  has 
always  shown  an  enhanced  sensitivity  which  eventuates  in  the  traits 
of  strong  subjectivity  and  richness  of  subconscious  processes.  We  do 
not  mean  to  say  that  the  mystic  is  born  with  a  subjective  attitude 
and  an  active  subconsciousness,  but  that  both  of  these  develop  more 
readily  in  response  to  the  environment  because  of  the  enhanced  sensi- 
tiveness which  the  mystic  has.  These  two  traits  are  so  often  manifest 
in  the  adult  life  of  the  mystic  that  they  are  worthy  of  some  discussion 
on  their  own  account. 

No  one  can  read  far  in  a  volume  of  mystical  writings  without  soon 
becoming  aware  of  the  fact  that  the  predominant  interest  of  the  author 
is  in  his  mental  processes  with  all  their  varying  forms  of  ideas,  feehngs, 
imaginations,  hopes,  fears,  etc.  The  state  of  the  soul  is  the  constant 
subject  of  examination  for  the  mystic.  He  dreads  his  impulses,  analyses 
his  motives,  suffers  under  interior  drynesses,  questions  even  his  devo- 
tional sweetnesses,  strives  to  empty  his  mind  of  all  images  or  tries  to  fill 
it  with  some  religious  symbol.  The  stimuli  of  the  outer  world  are  mis- 
trusted and  shunned  because  of  the  distracting  influence  which  they 
have  upon  the  episodes  of  his  inner  life.  His  attitude  toward  his  inner 
experience  is  not  that  of  the  scientific  psychologist  who  analyses  its 
nature  with  a  view  to  getting  a  clear  picture  of  the  processes  of  which  it 
is  composed:  but  he  looks  upon  the  quality  of  his  inner  states  as  of 
infinite  moment  to  his  personal  destiny.     He  scrutinizes  his  sensations, 


14  A  PSYCHOLOGICAL  INTERPRETATION  OF  MYSTICISM 

ideas  and  feelings  in  order  to  control  them,  to  manipulate  them,  to 
change  them  and  to  get  forward  in  the  world  which  they  compose.  The 
effect  of  this  intense  interior  interest  is  pictured  in  the  "mystic  path" 
or  "way"  which  has  been  described  by  mystics  of  every  creed  and  race. 
To  represent  his  progress  under  the  similitude  of  a  spiritual  journey  has 
been  a  favorite  device  of  the  mystic.  The  adventures  along  that  pil- 
grimage are  more  tragically  real  for  him  than  any  of  the  events  of  the 
mere  external  physical  world.  Being  wholly  subjective  they  enhst  the 
feelings  to  an  exceptional  degree.  It  is  probable  that  few  persons  who  are 
not  pathological  experience  such  emotional  extremes  as  does  the  mystic. 
The  same  individual  experiences  inexpressible  raptures  and  the  miseries 
of  heaviest  despairs. 

It  is  natural  that  this  constant  inward  scrutiny  directed  upon  the 
mental  processes,  not  in  their  relation  to  things  but  to  the  self  should 
profoundly  affect  the  mystic's  problem  of  adjustment.  For  him  the 
organization  of  his  inner  life  is  paramount  to  adaptation  to  any  material 
environment,  however  large.  He  cannot,  of  course,  escape  the  influence 
of  his  envirormient,  as  we  shaU  see  later,  but  his  strong  introspective 
tendency  greatly  affects  the  significance  of  that  environment  for  him. 
It  becomes  for  him,  not  an  object  of  conquest,  but  a  means  or  a  hindrance 
to  the  establishment  of  a  satisfactory  inward  order.  So  Leuba  well  says 
that  one  of  the  profoundest  needs  of  the  mystic  is  mental  peace.  To 
the  attainment  of  that  goal  he  subordinates  every  other  life  interest. 
We  find,  therefore,  that  the  mystic  reacts  to  his  surroundings,  at  least 
in  the  earlier  period  of  his  development,  after  a  fashion  almost  wholly 
negative.  His  attitude  is,  in  the  words  of  Baron  von  Hiigel,  "a  care- 
ful turning  away  from  all  multiplicity  and  contingency,  from  the  visible 
and  successive,  from  all  that  does  or  can  distract  and  dissipate."  In 
other  words  the  mystic's  mode  of  unifying  his  experience  is  not  that 
either  of  vigorously  exploiting  his  environment  in  the  interests  of  some 
central  purpose  or  of  grasping  its  myriad  manifestations  into  some  sort 
of  reasoned  system,  but  that  of  holding  off  as  much  of  it  as  possible,  of 
reducing  the  mental  content  to  the  minimum.  The  logical  result  is  a 
state  of  oblivion  to  the  entire  external  order.  Where  the  mystics  have 
been  able  to  follow  this  movement  of  negation  to  its  limit  they  have 
arrived  at  a  state  of  ecstasy  or  trance  in  which  they  have  had  the  sense 
of  an  absolute  unification  of  their  mental  life. 

It  is  probable  that  the  second  trait  in  the  developed  mystic  which 
has  its  root  in  enhanced  sensitivity  of  temperament,  viz.,  richness  of 
subconscious  processes,  is  related  to  the  foregoing  trait  of  subjectivity. 


THE  FACTORS  INVOLVED  IN  MYSTICAL  DEVELOPMENT        15 

Since  the  mystic  seeks  in  the  interest  of  internal  order  to  repress  the 
influence  of  his  outer  world  through  the  focus  of  consciousness,  it  is  not 
surprising  that  the  environment  should  affect  him  mostly  through  the 
margin.  The  various  stimuli  play  upon  him,  despite  his  indifference  to 
them  and,  organizing  below  the  threshold  of  clearest  consciousness,  rise 
above  that  threshold  from  time  to  time  in  intuitions  of  exceptional 
vividness.  Hence  we  find  a  St.  Teresa  sometimes  having  visions  in 
which  definite  commands  were  laid  upon  her,  which  when  obeyed  led  to  a 
successful  mastery  of  the  situation  in  which  she  then  was. 

When  we  refer  to  the  subconscious  we  are  not  dealing  with  an  aspect 
of  the  mystic's  life  which  is  qualitatively  different  from  anything  found 
in  our  own.  Modem  research  into  the  obscurer  phases  of  our  conscious- 
ness has  made  it  increasingly  clearer  that  every  person  is  subject  to 
operations  going  on  outside  the  field  of  immediate  attention  and  con- 
scious effort,  which  make  material  contributions  to  the  sum  total  of  his 
experience.  The  great  mass  of  our  past  impressions  does  not  lie  pas- 
sively idle  somewhere  in  the  background  of  our  mental  life.  It  moves, 
changes,  disintegrates  and  recombines,  from  time  to  time  sending  forth 
its  results  into  the  clear  center  of  our  awareness  in  a  fashion  that  often 
surprises  us.  The  problem  that  gets  itself  solved  over  night,  the  "bright 
idea"  that  flashes  upon  us  seemingly  from  the  void,  the  unexpected 
intuition  of  a  truth  before  hidden,  in  fact,  all  the  knowledge  which, 
as  we  say,  "comes  to  us,"  illustrates  the  procedure  in  question.  We  are 
always  aware  that  these  experiences  are  not  the  immediate  result  of 
conscious  effort  on  our  part.  We  may,  indeed,  recognize  that  fragments 
of  them  were  at  one  time  or  another  the  objects  of  direct  attention;  but 
their  structure  and  arrangement  seem  to  be  none  of  ours.  Furthermore 
they  often  contain  elements  for  which  we  cannot  account.  These  novel 
components  are  explained  most  rationally  as  resulting  from  impressions 
made  upon  us  unconsciously.  For,  after  all,  we  are  vividly  cognizant 
of  but  a  small  portion  of  the  numberless  stimuli  that  play  upon  us 
throughout  a  day.  There  are  a  thousand  details  which  impart  a  flavor 
to  our  experience  which  we  would  be  utterly  incapable  of  analysing  with 
precision  from  our  environment.  The  deUcate  task  of  receiving  these 
impressions,  merging  them,  and  creating  our  more  intuitive,  unreasoned, 
adjustment  to  them  falls  to  the  lot  of  those  processes  which  we  call  sub- 
conscious, or,  to  speak  more  accurately,  that  whole  aspect  of  behaviour 
whereby  we  react  to  our  obscurer  impressions  is  the  subconscious.  Now 
this  phase  of  mental  process  seems  to  develop  to  a  greater  degree  in 
persons   of   especially   sensitive   temperament.    The   genius   with   his 


16  A  PSYCHOLOGICAL  INTERPRETATION  OF  MYSTICISM 

"inspirations"  exhibits  the  happier  effects  possible  from  it.  The  hys- 
terical with  his  "attacks"  shows  its  aberrations  under  pathological  con- 
ditions. We  may  leave  to  the  specialists  the  decision  as  to  the  precise 
reason  why  some  persons  are  more  heavily  predisposed  to  subconscious 
operations  than  the  average.  It  really  depends  upon  the  ultimate 
explanation  of  temperament;  and,  as  we  shall  later  see,  the  tendency 
of  recent  explanation  is  to  connect  the  whole  matter  of  temperament 
with  the  bodily  constitution.  But  we  are  not  concerned  in  this  study 
with  pushing  our  investigation  back  into  the  domain  of  physiology. 
Whatever  the  ultimate  basis  may  there  be  found  to  be,  the  significant 
fact  for  us  is  that  the  mystic  falls  within  the  class  of  those  who  are  apt 
to  develop,  because  of  their  enhanced  sensitiveness,  a  higher  degree  of 
subconscious  activity  than  the  average.  He  represents,  nevertheless, 
only  an  enhancement  of  a  phase  of  our  mental  life  familiar  on  a 
modest  scale  to  us  all. 

The  richer  activity  of  the  subconscious  in  the  mystic  expresses  itself 
in  bursts  of  special  insight,  visions,  interior  voices,  sudden  solution  of 
mental  difficulties  after  a  period  of  anxiety  and  scruple,  sometimes  even 
in  automatic  writing.  These  phenomena  are  felt  by  the  mystic  to 
originate  objectively  and  externally  and  have  been  uniformly  ascribed 
by  him  to  the  direct  operation  of  supernatural  force,  either  divine  or 
diabolic  according  as  the  outcome  of  such  irruptions  seemed  to  be  desir- 
able or  otherwise.  This  strong  sense  of  objectivity  is  shared  by  the  mys- 
tic with  the  musician  and  the  poet  whose  inspirations  break  upon  them 
with  a  seeming  capriciousness  that  behes  their  more  conscious  efforts.^ 
The  ancient  ascription  of  artistic  power  to  the  influence  of  the  muse 
sprang  undoubtedly  from  the  fact  that  the  ready  flow  of  musical  or 
poetical  ideas  is  not  in  direct  ratio  to  voluntary  effort.  Ideas  seem  to  be 
given,  not  manufactured.  The  keenest  form  of  this  sense  of  objectivity 
is  doubtless  found  in  the  hallucinations  of  the  hysterical  and  the  insane: 
in  these  folk  the  products  of  a  disordered  working  of  subconscious  process- 
es are  confused  with  the  actual,  external  world.  But,  striking  as  all  these 
phenomena  may  be,  they  are  yet  no  different  in  kind  from  certain  experi- 
ences of  our  own  suggested  above.  It  is  characteristic  of  subconscious 
operations  that  the  contributions  which  they  make  always  seem  external 
to  the  main  consciousness.  But  whereas  the  ordinary  subconsciousness 
does  not  make  such  extreme  changes  in  its  material  as  to  cover  up  all 
traces  of  dependence  upon  the  center  of  clearest  activity,  these  especially 

*  See  Stevenson's  account  of  his  experiences  in  literary  composition.  Quoted  in 
Jastrow's  The  Subconscious,  pp.  70-72. 


THE  FACTORS  INVOLVED  IN  MYSTICAL  DEVELOPMENT        17 

developed  types  of  subconsciousness  mature  their  impressions  to  so 
remarkable  a  degree  that  the  results,  when  they  arise  before  the  focus 
of  consciousness,  seem  practically  unrelated  to  the  personal  effort  of  the 
subject.  We  hope  to  show,  however,  that  in  the  case  of  the  mystics  at 
least,  the  revelations  are  not  so  far  removed  from  the  personal  ener- 
gizings  of  the  subject  as  he  is  inclined  to  feel.  The  supematuralistic 
interpretation  has  arisen  largely  from  a  failure  to  recognize  that  our 
hidden  activities  are  as  much  a  part  of  ourselves  as  those  which  we  per- 
form with  our  conscious  effort. 

But  aside  from  the  inner  factors  of  instincts  and  sensitivity  of  tem- 
perament there  is  yet  another  great  contributor  to  mystical  development 
which  must  not  be  disregarded  in  any  attempt  at  a  rounded  view  of  the 
experience.  An  individual  might  be  equipped  with  all  the  usual  instincts 
and  with  an  unusually  responsive  temperament  but  without  a  favoring 
environment  would  not  develop  into  a  mystic.  It  is  not  at  all  unthink- 
able that  a  mystic  like  Suso  might  have  become  known  primarily  as  an 
artist  or  a  poet  had  his  surroundings  been  predominantly  aesthetic  rather 
than  religious.  On  the  other  hand  we  can  well  imagine  that  Dante 
would  have  made  a  mystic  of  the  first  water  had  his  early  training  been 
wholly  restricted  to  rehgious  subjects.  We  mean  to  say  that  tempera- 
mental qualifications  need  to  be  supplemented  by  the  direction  of  cir- 
cumstances before  the  individual  will  become  either  mystic  or  poet. 
He  may  have  enhanced  sensitivity  but  this  sensitivity  needs  to  be 
exposed  to  stimuli  of  a  certain  order  if  a  life  with  a  characteristic  content 
is  to  develop. 

Now  in  considering  the  part  played  by  environment  in  mystical 
experience  it  is  necessary  to  bear  certain  fundamental  facts  of  our  human 
nature  in  mind.  We  may  say  that  the  deepest  tendency  in  our  being 
is  to  adjust  to  the  milieu  in  which  we  find  ourselves.  The  development 
of  this  tendency  was  an  absolute  necessity  if  man  or  any  other  organism 
was  to  persist  long  in  its  proper  form.  Lack  of  adjustment  meant  death. 
In  the  lower  organisms  adjustments  are  made  instinctively  without  the 
aid  of  reflective  consciousness.  Consequently  the  environment  to  which 
it  is  possible  for  them  to  adapt  themselves  is  small.  But  man  has 
developed  a  means  to  aid  him  in  the  ever-present  problem  of  life  by  which 
he  can  interact  with  a  far  wider  and  more  complex  set  of  surroundings 
than  the  simple  physical  environment.  By  means  of  ideas  he  is  able  to 
prepare  himself  to  encounter  the  distant,  both  in  time  and  space.  Mod- 
ern thought  is  coming  gradually  to  recognize  that  the  intellect  is  a  tool 
which  man  uses  to  help  himself  onward.     Now,  by  this  tool  man  is  con- 


18  A  PSYCHOLOGICAL  INTERPRETATION  OF  MYSTICISM 

stantly  projecting  bis  world  before  him  in  some  fashion  or  other  in  order 
to  better  guide  his  actions.  He  reads  meaning  into  the  complex  crowd 
of  stimuli  constantly  playing  upon  him.  But  this  task  of  reading  mean- 
ing into  the  world  is  far  from  being  an  independent  task  of  each  separate 
individual.  If  it  were  such  there  would  be  no  advance  over  the  most 
meager  beginnings.  Each  generation  would  be  compelled  to  start  all  over 
again.  Instead  of  this  individuals  cooperate  in  the  matter.  Through 
the  power  of  language  communication  they  compare  and  share  experi- 
ences and  through  the  centuries  build  up  a  world  of  meanings  which  is 
preeminently  a  social  product.  This  means  that  after  the  process  of 
building  up  the  mental  world  has  gone  on  for  centuries  each  child  as  he 
comes  into  the  world  of  human  experience  is  no  longer  free  to  see  things 
merely  in  his  own  terms.  Indeed  that  would  be  undesirable  since  he 
would  see  but  Uttle.  But  he  comes  to  take  his  experiences  as  they  are 
interpreted  for  him  by  society  at  large.  He  uses  the  language  of  the 
social  group  into  which  he  is  bom  and  by  that  very  fact  comes  under  the 
dominance  of  the  concepts  which  the  long  experience  of  the  group  has 
built  up.  This  conceptual  world  which  is  a  social  product  becomes  for 
him  the  real  world  to  which  he  must  make  his  adjustment.  Or,  to  state 
it  differently,  he  adjusts  himself  to  the  world  by  taking  it  in  the  terms  of 
his  social  group.  The  group  conceptions,  in  turn,  depend  upon  those 
things  which  are  of  supreme  value  to  the  group  and  which  serve  as  the 
unifying  center  around  which  the  group  is  organized.  In  an  article  on 
*' Social  Consciousness  and  its  Object"^"  Professor  Ames  has  pointed  out 
that  the  highest  social  concerns  of  a  group  are  idealized  in  the  group 
consciousness  in  the  conception  of  a  Supreme  Being  which  takes  its  char- 
acter from  them.  If  the  group  is  a  pastoral  people,  the  center  of  its 
consciousness  is  its  flocks  and  herds.  The  Supreme  Being  becomes 
symbolized  therefore  as  a  sheep  or  bull,  as  was  the  case  in  ancient  Israel. 
When,  however,  the  group  is  organized  about  the  person  of  a  monarch 
the  Supreme  Being  is  endowed  with  the  personal  attributes  of  royalty. 
It  was  this  latter  conception  of  what  is  Supreme  Being  or  Supreme 
Reality  which  overshadowed  the  consciousness  of  the  Western  World  in 
the  Middle  Ages.  The  church  with  its  imperial  organization  centering 
in  the  Pontiff  at  Rome  was  the  source  and  guardian  of  the  highest  values 
of  life.  Thus  the  sum  of  all  worth  was  conceived  as  a  transcendent 
Being  of  more  than  regal  splendor.  This  view  which  arose  naturally 
out  of  the  social  organization  was  reinforced  in  the  minds  of  thinking 
people  by  the  AristoteUan  doctrine  of  the  transcendency  of  the  unmoved 
^"Psychological  Bulletin  for  December  15,  1911. 


THE  FACTORS  INVOLVED  IN  MYSTICAL  DEVELOPMENT        19 

mover  which  received  enormous  emphasis  at  the  hands  of  Plotinus  and 
other  Neo-Platonic  writers  and  was  a  dominant  force  in  the  Medieval 
theology. 

The  significance  of  all  this  for  mysticism  is  that  the  great  mystics 
of  history  received  in  childhood  from  their  environment,  almost  as 
readily  as  the  air  which  they  breathed,  an  idea  of  reality  which  could 
not  but  call  for  an  unusual  kind  of  reaction.  God,  the  quintessence  of 
all  value,  was  exalted  far  above  the  limited  things  of  time  and  sense. 
Beyond  all  things  human  and  terrestrial,  above  all  particularity,  he 
remains  eternal  Spirit  as  over  against  the  temporal  fleshliness  of  the 
world  of  common  experience.  This  was  the  profoundest  world  which 
the  sensitive  spirits  of  the  JMiddle  Ages  found  presented  to  them  by  their 
social  milieu.  To  this,  if  they  were  in  earnest,  must  they  make  their 
adjustment.  All  else  was  but  shadow  and  unreality  or  at  best  but  symbol 
of  the  transcendent  value. 

But  not  only  was  the  object  of  adjustment  suggested  by  the  social 
environment,  but  also  the  means  of  attaining  it.  Doubtless  the  method 
of  asceticism  was  the  outcome  of  the  accumulated  reflections  of  the 
earliest  mystics  upon  the  impUcation  of  a  transcendent  object.  If  God 
is  other  than  all  known  things  he  must  be  reached  by  going  out  beyond 
them.  But  as  generation  after  generation  thought  upon  this  problem 
through  the  course  of  the  Medieval  period,  practices  arose  which  were 
passed  on,  becoming  suggestions  to  later  inheritors  of  these  ideas  of  the 
proper  ways  of  passing  out  of  the  influence  of  temporal  and  particular 
things.  When  we  reach  the  time  of  St.  John  of  the  Cross  (1542-1591) 
it  has  become  possible  to  formulate  the  various  kinds  of  purgation 
necessary  in  order  to  rid  oneself  wholly  of  the  influence  of  sense,  desire, 
memories  and  imaginations.  Thus  a  technique  of  mysticism  was 
developed  which  became  also  part  of  the  environment  for  susceptible 
youth,  particularly  if  that  youth  was  enclosed  in  monastic  walls.  It  is 
interesting  to  notice  in  the  lives  of  the  great  mystics  how  they  are  influ- 
enced early,  either  through  persons  or  books,  by  the  conceptions  of  the 
transcendence  of  God  and  the  "via  negativa"  method  of  attaining  to 
him.  St.  Catherine  of  Genoa  was  "certainly  and  deeply  dra^vn  to  the 
conventual  life"  by  the  example  of  her  elder  sister,  Limbania,  who  was 
an  Augustinian  nun.^^  St.  Teresa,  as  we  shall  see  later,  was  bom  in  a 
religious  household  and  tells  of  the  longing  for  martyrdom  inspired  by 
her  early  reading  of  the  Lives  of  the  Saints.^-    Al  Ghazzali,  the  noted 

"  Baron  von  Hugel,  The  Mystical  Element  of  Religion,  Vol.  I,  p.  100. 

'-  See  Life,  Chap.  I,  par.  4. 


20  A  PSYCHOLOGICAL  INTERPRETATION  OF  MYSTICISM 

Mohammedan  mystic,  was  confided  to  the  care  of  a  Sufi  in  early  Ufe 
and  the  influence  of  the  thought  thereby  imbibed  followed  him  through- 
out his  career  until  after  long  wandering  in  the  fields  of  Moslem  theology 
and  philosophy  he  was  finally  drawn  well  within  the  circle  of  Sufi  mysti- 
cism in  about  his  fortieth  year.^^  Madame  Guyon  was  a  reader  of 
St.  Francis  de  Sales  and  St.  Jeanne  Francoise  de  Chantal  at  the  age  of 
twelve.^^  Suso  as  a  youth  was  a  diUgent  student  of  Eckhart,  Dionysius 
and  Thomas  Acquinas.  The  German  mystics  of  the  fourteenth  century 
all  took  rehgious  orders  at  an  early  age.  All  of  these  representatives  of 
mysticism,  whether  Mohammedan  or  Christian,  were  taught  the  doc- 
trine of  the  antagonism  of  the  flesh  and  spirit,  mind  and  body,  the  world 
and  God.  And  along  with  this,  through  personal  ensample  or  direct 
teaching,  they  learned  the  way  of  asceticism  and  self-denial. 

We  have  now  observed  the  three  great  conditioning  factors  in  the 
development  of  the  mystic  as  history  has  shown  it.  In  accordance  with 
our  analysis  the  mystic  appears  as  an  individual  who  is  especially  sensi- 
tive and  responsive  to  his  environment,  i.  e.,  the  socially  produced  world 
of  meanings,  and  who  strives  to  come  into  immediate  relationship  with 
the  highest  values  which  that  environment  affords.  In  the  past  the 
mystic  has  been  especially  associated  with  an  interpretation  of  the  world 
which  has  made  value  or  the  highest  reality  transcendent.  This  has 
had  the  effect  of  influencing  him  to  unify  his  tendencies  about  the  single 
purpose  of  attaining  to  immediate  communion  with  a  Being  which  is 
beyond  all  finitude  and  multipHcity.  So  much  for  the  chief  factors  in 
the  development  of  the  historical  mystic.  How  can  we  describe  the  out- 
come of  the  process? 

To  the  modern  psychologist  the  procedure  of  the  mystic  in  his  adjust- 
ment to  the  demands  of  the  highest  ideals  of  his  time  appears  as  an 
elaborate  species  of  auto-hypnosis.  The  final  state  at  which  the  mystic 
arrives  is  distinctly  comparable  to  the  hypnotic  state  which  is  otherwise 
induced.  The  mystic  strives  to  empty  his  consciousness  of  all  forms  in 
order  that  he  may  arrive  at  that  which  is  above  form.  The  following 
from  a  dialog  of  Boehme  is  a  typical  expression  by  the  mystic  of  his 
method.  "When  both  thy  intellect  and  will  are  quiet,  and  passive  to 
the  impressions  of  the  Eternal  Word  and  Spirit;  and  when  thy  soul  is 
winged  up,  and  above  that  which  is  temporal,  the  outward  senses,  and 
the  imagination  being  locked  up  in  holy  abstraction,  then  the  eternal 

"  See  the  Confessions  of  Al  Ghazzali,  Widscm  of  the  East  Series,  New  York,  1909. 

"Underbill,  Evelyn,  Mysticism,  p.  221. 


THE  FACTORS  INVOLVED  IN  MYSTICAL  DEVELOPMENT 


21 


hearing,   seeing   and   speaking   will   be   revealed   in   thee 

Blessed  art  thou  therefore  if  that  thou  canst  stand  still  from  self-thinking 
and  self-willing,  and  canst  stop  the  wheel  of  thy  imagination  and  senses." 

The  holy  abstraction  here  indicated  was  cultivated  by  the  mystic 
through  prayer,  contemplation,  fixation  of  the  attention  upon  some 
single  idea,  or  when  possible,  by  making  the  mind  blank  in  order  that 
the  Spirit  of  God  might  have  its  way.  The  control  of  the  contents  of 
consciousness  in  this  way  is  no  simple  matter  and  the  degree  to  which  it 
was  successfully  attained  varied  considerably  according  to  the  temper- 
amental sensitivity  of  the  individual  who  performed  the  necessary 
practice.  Miss  Underbill  in  making  her  division  of  the  mystic  progress 
(awakening,  purgation,  illumination,  mystic  death,  and  union)  points 
out  that  there  are  but  few  who  traverse  the  entire  experience.  There 
are  many  who  halt  at  each  stage  and  get  no  farther.  The  number  of 
seekers  diminishes  as  we  pass  from  each  lower  to  a  higher  level.  There 
are  some  pfersons,  however,  whose  psychical  organization  is  so  sensitive 
that  these  practices  and  their  results  are  acquired  with  less  difficulty 
than  is  experienced  by  others.  They  push  on  to  a  stage  in  which  all 
cognitive  content  is  banished  entirely  and  nothing  remains  but  a  pro- 
found sense  of  joy  and  well-being.  The  state  is  so  decidedly  one  of 
union,  so  devoid  of  any  sense  of  differentiation  that  it  is  not  surprising 
that  the  mystics  should  have  hailed  it  as  the  point  of  contact  with  the 
unitary  undifferentiated  reality  which  they,  along  with  the  whole  religi- 
ous world,  had  conceived.  The  conviction  was  doubtless  strengthened 
by  the  intensity  of  the  pleasurable  affective  tone  of  the  experience.  A 
joy  so  unique,  so  intense  surely  must  be  evidence,  so  thinks  the  mystic, 
that  the  goal  of  all  desire  is  at  last  reached. 

As  a  result  of  modern  research  it  appears  that  the  state  reached  by 
the  mystic  is  not  so  unique  as  he  was  led  to  believe.  We  should  remem- 
ber that  the  great  historical  mystics  lived  in  the  days  when  the  laws  of 
suggestion  were  not  understood.  It  happens  that  the  mystic  following 
out  his  ideas  of  escaping  the  world  of  sense  desire  and  imagination 
unwittingly  stumbled  upon  the  correct  conditions  for  the  hypnotic  state. 
To  the  mystic  himself  the  practices  which  he  followed  were  but  the 
negative  means  to  create  within  himself  a  condition  of  passivity  so  that 
the  divine  power  might  work  its  will  through  him.  But  in  reality  they 
were  positive  efiforts  which  resulted  in  self -hypnosis.  This  comes  out 
clearly  if  we  make  a  comparison  of  the  conditions  resulting  from  the 
practices  of  the  mystics  with  the  regular  conditions  of  hypnosis. 


22  A  PSYCHOLOGICAL  INTERPRETATION  OF  MYSTICISM 

Boris  Sidis  has  analysed  the  conditions  of  hypnosis  as  follows.^^ 

1.  Fixation  of  attention. 

2.  Monotony. 

3.  Limitation  of  voluntary  movements. 

4.  Limitation  of  the  field  of  consciousness. 

5.  Inhibition. 

All  of  these  factors  can  be  found  in  the  mystic  experience.  We  illustrate 
them  in  order. 

1.  Fixation  of  attention.  In  the  writings  of  the  mystics  there  is 
constant  reference  to  continual  occupation  of  the  mind  with  the  thought 
of  God  or  Christ.  "The  soul,"  says  St.  Teresa  commenting  on  ways  in 
which  the  beginner  in  devotion  may  help  himself,  ''may  also  place 
itself  in  the  presence  of  Christ,  and  accustom  itself  to  many  acts  of  love 
directed  to  his  sacred  humanity,  and  remain  in  his  presence  continu- 
ally, and  speak  to  him,  pray  to  him  in  its  necessities  and  complain  to 
him  of  its  troubles:  be  merry  with  him  in  its  joys,  and  yet  not  forget 

bim  because  of  its  joys This  practice  of  the  presence  of 

Christ  is  profitable  in  all  states  of  prayer."^^  Likewise  St.  John  of  the 
Cross  advising  those  for  whom  meditation  is  no  longer  a  help  says,  "They 

should    keep    patience, contenting    themselves    simply 

with  directing  their  attention  lovingly  and  calmly  towards  God."  This 
is  the  simple  beginning  of  the  practice  which  when  steadily  persisted  in 
leads  to  an  intense  monoideism  at  a  more  advanced  period  of  mystical 
experience.  The  constant  reversion  of  the  thoughts  to  God,  the  One 
which  is  beyond  all,  passes  over  into  more  and  more  intense,  more  and 
more  prolonged  concentration  of  the  whole  mind  upon  that  one  idea. 
At  the  stage  of  closest  fixation  the  attention  is  wholly  withdrawn  from 
external  objects  and  the  body  is  unresponsive  to  ordinary  stimuli.  The 
Christian  Mystics  seem  to  have  built  up  their  power  of  fixation  rather 
slowly  and  unconsciously.  This  is  no  doubt  due  to  a  certain  abhorrence 
which  they  felt  for  a  voluntary  and  deliberate  attempt  to  bring  on  the 
trance  state  through  arbitrary  recollection  (i.  e.,  concentration).  Such  a 
procedure  seemed  but  a  reliance  upon  their  own  efforts.  They  usually 
speak  of  the  more  advanced  state  as  coming  of  itself,  or  better,  being 
given  to  them.  But  in  psychological  terms  this  means  the  hidden  sub- 
conscious maturing  of  tendencies  started  in  the  main  consciousness. 
That  is  to  say,  the  mystic  in  the  very  act  of  fixing  his  thoughts  on  God 
for  God's  own  sake  was  really,  without  being  aware  of  it,  cultivating  an 

"  See  Sidis,  Boris,  Psychology  of  Suggestion,  Chap.  VI. 
"  Life,  Chap.  XII,  pars.  3-4^ 


THE  FACTORS  INVOLVED  IN  MYSTICAL  DEVELOPMENT  23 

ability  for  fixation  which  is  one  of  the  most  fruitful  means  for  the  pro- 
duction of  an  abnormal  state.  The  Oriental  mystics,  on  the  other  hand, 
had  less  scruple  about  the  conscious  production  of  their  ecstasies.  They 
therefore  furnish  some  of  the  clearest  instances  of  the  part  played  by 
the  condition  of  fixation  of  attention.  The  following  is  very  illuminating 
in  this  connection.    It  is  summarized  from  the  statement  of  Al  Ghazzali. 

"Let  him  reduce  his  heart  to  a  state  in  which  the  existence  of  anything 
and  its  nonexistence  are  the  same  to  him.  Then  let  him  sit  alone  in 
some  corner,  limiting  his  religious  duties  to  what  is  absolutely  necessary, 
and  not  occupying  himself  either  with  reciting  the  Koran  or  considering 
its  meaning  or  with  books  or  religious  traditions  or  with  anything  of  the 
sort.  And  let  him  see  to  it  that  nothing  save  God  most  high  enters  his 
mind.     Then  as  he  sits  in  solitude,  let  him  not  cease  saying  continuously 

with  his  tongue,  'Allah,  Allah'  keeping  his  thoughts  upon  it 

Let  him  still  persevere  until  the  form  of  the  word,  its  letters  and  shape, 
is  removed  from  his  heart,  and  there  remains  the  idea  alone  clinging  to 
his  heart,  inseparable  from  it."^^ 

This  evidences  a  more  conscious  striving  for  the  state  of  recollected- 
ness  than  the  Christian  mystics  manifest.  But  Al  Gha,zzali  is  aware  of 
the  fact  no  less  than  are  the  mystics  of  the  West  that  the  climax  of  the 
striving  is  beyond  the  voluntary  wish  of  the  individual.  For  he  goes  on 
to  say,  "So  far,  all  is  dependent  on  his  (i.  e.,  the  devotee's)  will  and 
choice ;  but  to  bring  the  mercy  of  God  does  not  stand  in  his  will  or  choice. 
.  .  .  If  he  follows  the  above  course,  he  may  be  sure  that  the  light 
of  the  real  will  shine  out  in  his  heart.  At  first  unstable,  like  a  flash  of 
lightning,  it  turns  and  returns;  though  sometimes  it  hangs  back.  And 
if  it  returns  sometimes  it  abides  and  sometimes  it  is  momentary.  And 
if  it  abides,  sometimes  its  abiding  is  long  and  sometimes  short."  ^^  Psy- 
chologically this  sense  of  the  working  of  a  power  not  ourselves  indi- 
cates the  product  of  subconscious  operations  set  going  by  the  conscious 
efforts  of  the  individual.  It  is  incalculable,  being  sometimes  long  and 
sometimes  short,  because  all  our  subconscious  proceedings  are  outside 
of  any  but  the  most  indirect  influence  of  our  clear  volitions. 

The  mystic  fixation  of  attention  differs  from  that  of  ordinary  hyp- 
notic fLxation  in  being  always  directed  upon  a  religious  object  and  in 
being  self -suggested,  and,  in  the  case  of  the  Christian  mystics  at  least, 
in  being  built  up  gradually  through  not  being  sought  directly.     In  the 

"  Nicholson's  Mystics  of  Islam,  pp.  46-47. 
^Ubid. 


24  A  PSYCHOLOGICAL  INTERPRETATION  OF  MYSTICISM 

ordinary  hypnosis  the  principle  is  clearly  recognized.  So  the  precise 
object  of  fixation  does  not  matter  particularly.  Attention  may  be 
directed  upon  a  bright  object,  the  expectation  of  some  signal  such  as  a 
ray  of  light  meant  to  induce  hypnosis,  the  idea  of  sleep — in  fact  anything 
which  will  further  the  concentration  of  attention.  The  most  skilled 
hypnotists  have  made  use  of  many  things  for  their  purpose.  Further, 
hypnotic  fixation  follows  upon  the  suggestion  of  a  second  person  in  whom 
the  subject  has  confidence  that  he  can  produce  the  effect  of  h3^nosis. 
And  lastly,  because  the  principle  involved  is  definitely  known,  the 
fixation  is  sought  directly  and  so  developed  in  a  much  shorter  time  that 
it  takes  the  mystic  to  acquire  it.  In  the  case  of  the  mystic  it  is  entangled 
with  the  growth  of  moral  and  religious  attitudes  and  so  dependent  upon 
them. 

2.  Monotony.  The  part  played  by  monotony  is  already  suggested 
in  the  foregoing.  When  the  mind  is  directed  upon  one  idea  its  very 
uniformity  has  an  entrancing  effect.  The  repeated  utterance  of  the 
word  God  to  oneself  with  or  without  context  is  something  akin  to  the 
hypnotic  suggestion  "sleep,  sleep,  sleep."  The  undifferentiated  unity 
of  the  Neo-Platonists  is  a  monotonous  concept  to  hold  in  mind.  We  see 
in  the  quotation  from  Al  Ghazzali  to  what  a  state  of  utter  sameness  the 
mind  would  be  reduced  which  followed  his  directions  for  devotion.  The 
monotony  of  auto-hypnosis  may  be  of  two  kinds;  either  monotony  of 
thought,  such  as  the  meditation  on  the  eternal,  unchanging  Godhead,  or 
monotony  of  sense  impression,  such  as  the  beating  of  a  gong  or  hollow 
piece  of  wood  which  resounds  uniformly.  Or  the  monotony  may  be  a 
combination  of  these  two,  such  as  the  incessant  repetition  of  the  word 
"Allah"  used  by  the  Mohammedan  mystics.  This  latter  and  the 
monotony  of  sense  impression  are  used  by  Oriental  mystics  particularly. 
The  Christian  mystics  have  practiced  rather  the  monotony  of  thought. 
And  this  again  reveals  the  unconscious  nature  of  their  auto-hypnotic 
practice.  They  had  no  realization  of  monotony  as  a  means  to  their 
end  but  they  unintentionally  achieved  a  monotony  in  their  striving 
for  absolute  purity  of  thought.  But,  as  is  true  of  their  entire  practice, 
since  this  monotony  was  not  aimed  at  directly,  its  mastery  took  a  far 
longer  time  than  it  does  in  ordinary  hypnosis. 

3.  Limitation  oj  voluntary  movements.  This  takes  place  in  the  prac- 
tice of  prayer  or  meditation.  Outward  movements  are  checked  while 
the  mystic  concentrates  his  thought  upon  his  central  theme.  When  the 
ecstasy  or  trance  is  on,  the  body  is  fixed  into  a  cataleptic  position. 
"During  rapture,"  says  St.  Teresa,  "the  body  is  very  often  as  if  it  were 


THE  FACTORS  INVOLVED  IN  MYSTICAL  DEVELOPMENT  25 

dead,  perfectly  powerless."^^  This  condition,  again,  comes  gradually  upon 
the  Christian  mystic  as  does  the  fixation  of  attention.  In  fact  it  seems 
to  be  bound  up  with  the  act  of  fixation.  Voluntary  movement  is  a  con- 
dition for  changing  attention  through  the  increase  of  sensations  which 
it  naturally  produces.  Accordingly,  when  we  wish  to  hold  our  attention 
upon  some  one  thing  we  keep  our  bodily  position  fixed  in  order  to  prevent 
the  entrance  into  consciousness  of  disturbing  sensations.  Naturally  in 
his  hours  of  devotional  striving  the  mystic  quiets  all  outward  movement 
in  order  to  better  direct  his  thought  inwardly.  As  we  saw,  Al  Ghazzali 
councils  the  devotee  to  "sit  alone  in  some  corner,  limiting  his  religious 
duties  to  what  is  absolutely  necessary,"  not  occupying  himself  with  any- 
thing. The  art  of  sitting  thus  quietly  is  something  which  the  mystic 
cultivates  with  increasing  proficiency  until  it  culminates  at  last  in  the 
rigidity  of  the  trance  state  itself. 

4.  Limitation  of  the  field  of  consciousness.  The  limitation  of  the 
field  of  consciousness  is  very  clearly  implied  in  the  conditions  stated 
above.  The  concentration  of  the  attention  upon  some  single  concept 
necessarily  involves  ignoring  other  claimants  for  consciousness.  This 
is  one  of  the  most  consciously  practiced  of  the  conditions  of  the  peculiar 
sort  of  hypnosis  we  are  considering.  We  can  readily  see  why  this  is  so. 
The  mystic  definitely  seeks  to  pass  beyond  the  world  of  particular  and 
multiple  phenomena.  Therefore,  in  his  devotions  he  deliberately 
excludes  all  distracting  stimuli,  narrows  his  thought  to  his  conception 
of  the  Divine  and  prizes  the  purity  in  which  he  can  maintain  it.  "  Cease 
but  from  thine  own  activity,"  says  the  master  in  one  of  Boehem's  dia- 
logues, "Steadfastly  fixing  thine  eye  upon  one  point For 

this  end  gather  in  all  thy  thoughts  and  by  faith  press  in  to  the  center. "2*' 
A  deliberate  practice  such  as  this  though  difi&cult  may  pass  gradually 
to  a  stage  of  skill  or,  perhaps  we  should  say,  of  faciHty  in  which  the 
mystic  goes  easily,  sometimes  spontaneously,  into  a  condition  of  limi- 
tation of  the  field  of  consciousness.  The  technique  becomes  so  developed 
that  it  needs  but  a  slight  stimulus  to  set  it  working  with  all  its  thor- 
oughness and  with  the  utmost  ease.  In  advanced  experience  the  mystic 
limits  his  conscious  scope  through  the  simple  act  of  dwelling  on  some 
familiar  concept  of  the  transcendent  reality  or  its  symbol  in  the  form  of 
music,  the  crucifix,  the  sacred  host,  words  from  the  Bible,  or  other  sig- 
nificant object  which  suggests  or  calls  forth  his  mystical  reaction.    This 

"  Life,  Chap.  XX,  par.  23. 

^cBoehme,  Jacob,  Second  Dialog  on  the  Supersensual  Life,  bound  with  the  "Sig- 
nature of  All  Things,"  p.  248,  Everyman's  Library. 


26  A  PSYCHOLOGICAL  INTERPRETATION  OF  MYSTICISM 

fact  is  paralleled  in  ordinary  hypnotism  by  the  increasing  ease  with 
which  the  person  frequently  hypnotized  responds  to  the  suggestion  of 
his  director.  A  simple  wave  of  the  hand,  a  word,  a  glance  even,  is  suf- 
ficient for  the  hypnotic  sleep  in  a  familiar  patient  at  the  hand  of  the 
practiced  physician. 

5.  Inhibition.  The  reference  here  is  to  the  checking  and  exclusion 
of  irrelevant  mental  content — ideas,  imaginations,  memories,  desires, 
etc.  St.  John  of  the  Cross  repeatedly  insists  that  the  very  thought  of 
apprehensible  things  must  be  suppressed  if  one  is  to  attain  to  mystic 
union.  ''The  understanding  must  be  pure  and  empty  of  all  sensible 
objects,  disengaged  from  all  clear  intellectual  perceptions,  inwardly 
tranquil  and  still. "^^  It  is  sufficient  for  us  to  put  alongside  of  this  the 
following  from  Dr.  Sidis:  "The  hypnotic  trance  cannot  be  induced 
without  the  condition  of  inhibition.  The  subject  must  inhibit  all  ideas, 
all  images,  that  come  up  before  the  mind.  He  must  think  only  of  the 
brilliant  point,  of  the  tips  of  the  hypnotizer's  fingers,  of  the  passes,  of  the 
idea  of  going  to  sleep.  'Make  your  mind  a  blank,'  is  one  of  the  condi- 
tions required  by  the  h5rpnotizer  of  his  subjects."-^  So  also,  we  add,  is 
it  the  condition  required  by  the  mystic  of  himself. 

It  is  impossible,  when  we  see  the  mystic  thus  fulfilling,  even  if  uncon- 
sciously, all  the  conditions  leading  to  abnormal  suggestibility,  that  the 
result,  so  comparable  in  its  external  features  to  the  hypnotic  state, 
should  not  be  classed  in  our  thinking  with  this  latter  state. 

We  have  noted  now  the  three  factors  which  are  ultimately  responsible 
for  the  mystical  experience  and  have  shown  roughly  how,  under  the 
influence  of  the  Medieval  consciousness,  the  final  state  induced  was  a 
species  of  auto-hypnosis.  We  turn  now  to  examine  three  cases  of  mystic 
experience  in  detail.  Neo-Platonism  will  show  us  how  the  mystical 
exprience,  before  the  mystical  technique  and  tradition  had  been  devel- 
oped, arose  from  an  environment  in  which  two  sorts  of  social  conscious- 
ness were  struggling  for  supremacy.  St.  Teresa's  case  will  show  us  a 
mysticism  arising  from  an  environment  whose  highest  social  ideal  was 
the  conception  of  absolute  transcendency.  From  the  career  of  Pascal 
we  shall  learn  how  a  complex  environment  acting  on  a  sensitive  soul 
may  give  rise  to  a  mysticism  which  may  justly  be  called  a  defense  reac- 
tion. 

21  Ascent  oj  Monnt  Carmel,  Bk.  11,  Chap.  9. 

^Psychology  of  Suggestion,  p.  61. 


CHAPTER  II 

The  Development  of  Neo-Platonic  Mysticism 

One  of  the  never-failing  traits  in  the  rise  of  the  mystical  consciousness 
is  a  poignant  sense  of  need  of  immediate  contact  with  a  reality  which  is 
felt  as  being  somehow  removed  from  direct  experience.  Mystical  litera- 
ture abounds  with  utterances  expressive  of  a  feeling  of  lack,  of  estrange- 
ment, of  having  lost  one's  way.  The  world  of  everyday  experiences 
becomes  a  foreign  land,  a  desert  of  valuelessness,  dust  and  ashes.  This 
needy  state  of  consciousness  is  psychologically  an  indication  of  lack 
of  adjustment,  a  failure  of  ideas  to  function  efi&ciently  in  guiding  one's 
reaction  to  his  environment.  So  long  as  the  conceptions  by  which 
actions  are  guided  actually  enable  the  individual  to  apprehend  value 
there  is  no  feeling  that  reality  is  afar  off.  It  is  in  the  very  structure  of 
steady,  ongoing,  successful  experience.  The  distinction  between  appear- 
ance and  reality  is  not  necessary  because  things  turn  out  to  be  what 
they  seem.  That  is  to  say,  the  conceptions  which  are  framed  to  meet 
the  situation  actually  function.  But  when  there  is  failure  in  the  attempt- 
ed adjustment,  when  ideas  do  not  work  successfully  and  value  is  not 
found,  there  arises  the  consciousness  that  somehow  reality  has  been 
missed.  The  distinction  between  appearance  and  reality  appears  and 
the  felt  need  of  bridging  the  gap  between  the  two. 

Of  course,  this  feeling  of  lack  is  not  a  peculiar  possession  of  the  mystic 
consciousness.  It  belongs  to  any  problematic  situation.  It  is  the  sum- 
mons to  further  adjustive  effort.  It  is  the  warning  signal  that  the 
organized  impulses  are  not  fulfilling  themselves.  In  so  far  as  breakdown 
may  occur  in  any  career  the  mystic  is  not  unique  in  this  phase  of  experi- 
ence. 

But  the  mystic  is  distinct  in  the  attitude  which  he  takes  toward 
this  problematic  situation.  We  can  lay  hold  of  this  fact  if  we  contrast 
his  attitude  with  another  attitude  which  we  may  call  the  scientific. 
When  the  problematic  situation  occurs  a  definite  discrepancy  yawns 
between  the  idea  and  the  actual  circumstances.  A  choice  is  demanded 
between  allegiance  to  one  or  allegiance  to  the  other.  One  of  two  courses 
can  be  taken.  One  may  desert  his  idea  and  realize  that  he  must  recon- 
struct his  object  of  knowledge  in  the  light  of  this  new  experience.  Or 
he  may  cling  to  his  idea  and  insist  that  value  still  exists  there  while 
experience  itself  is  worthless.  The  former  course  is  expressed  in  the 
scientific  attitude  which  continually  stresses  experience  and  is  willing 


28  A  PSYCHOLOGICAL  INTERPRETATION  OF  MYSTICISM 

to  revise  its  concepts  in  the  light  of  experience.  The  other  is  the  mys- 
tical attitude  which  refuses  to  change  its  concept  and  finds  the  world  of 
actual  experience  to  be  only  illusion.  The  scientific  attitude  seeks  the 
sense  of  reality  in  a  new  conception  which  better  mediates  action  through 
grappling  with  the  details  of  the  situation.  The  mystical  attitude  insists 
that  reahty  lies  in  the  old  idea  which,  since  it  is  not  found  in  experience, 
must  be  sought  beyond  experience.  The  scientific  attitude  turns 
toward  the  world  of  particular  pheomena  in  order  to  learxi  of  them. 
The  mystical  attitude  turns  away  from  particulars  in  order  to  be  free 
from  them.  The  former  solves  the  problem  by  taking  full  account  of 
the  outer  facts:  the  latter  by  an  indifference  to  them. 

The  mystics  of  the  Middle  Ages  all  found  this  spHt  between  their 
world  of  values  and  the  world  of  common  experience.  But  in  their  case 
the  situation  was  created  because  the  social  consciousness  was  saturated 
throughout  with  the  idea  of  the  transcendency  of  God  as  well  as  with 
the  idea  of  world-renunciation.  We  shall  see  how  this  pervasive  view 
operated  upon  the  sensitive  soul  of  St.  Teresa  in  our  next  chapter.  In 
Neo-Platonism  we  find  the  split  being  caused  directly,  not  so  much  by 
the  suggestion  from  the  entire  social  consciousness  of  the  time,  as  by 
the  attempt  to  cling  to  the  ideals  of  a  passing  social  order  in  the  midst 
of  the  coming  of  a  new  one.  It  is  interesting  as  indicating  a  situation 
out  of  which  the  mystical  consciousness  arose,  to  be  reenforced  by  the 
later  social  order  and  passed  on  down  the  centuries  in  ever-widening 
circles  of  influence. 

Neo-Platonism  is  one  phase  of  the  projection  of  an  old  culture  into 
times  and  conditions  different  from  those  which  gave  it  birth.  Out- 
wardly the  old  social  order  was  crumbling.  The  Roman  Empire,  still 
pushed  on  by  the  momentum  of  the  past,  strove  to  maintain  itself  against 
the  encroachments  of  its  enemies,  but  the  continual  resurgence  of  Bar- 
barian effort  was  gradually  loosening  the  foundations  of  its  structure. 
During  the  three  centuries  of  the  history  of  the  Neo-Platonic  philosophy 
there  occurred  the  staggering  times  of  the  age  of  the  thirty  tyrants,  the 
attempt  of  Odenatus  and  Zenobia  to  build  up  a  great  Palmyrian  kingdom 
upon  the  ruins  of  the  imperial  possessions  in  the  East,  the  desperate 
defense  of  the  Empire  by  Valentinian  against  enemies  swarming  on  all 
frontiers,  the  invasion  of  the  Goths,  the  ravaging  activities  of  Alaricand 
Attila,  and  the  double  sack  of  Rome  herself.  As  these  events  were 
marking  the  close  of  the  outer  social  order,  the  corresponding  inner 
spiritual  order  of  old  Hellenic  thought  and  speculation  was  making  its 
last  stand  against  new  intellectual  tendencies  represented  by  Christianity. 


THE  DEVELOPMENT  OF  NEO-PLATONIC  MYSTICISM  29 

Neo-Platonism  is  really  the  last  efifort  of  the  philosophic  side  of  Hellenic 
culture  to  maintain  itself  against  the  influx  of  ideas  and  tendencies 
coming  from  the  Orient. 

Under  circumstances  such  as  these  there  was  bound  to  occur  a 
diremption  between  the  conceived  world  of  values  and  the  world  of 
immediate  experience.  The  former  no  longer  mediated  effective  adjust- 
ment to  the  latter.  In  the  crisis  one  of  two  ways  might  be  taken  by  an 
individual  sensitive  to  the  problem.  If  one's  feeUngs  inclined  to  the  new 
tendencies  of  the  time  he  could  turn  away  from  the  conceptions  belonging 
to  the  former  order  and  find  in  those  which  arose  with  the  new  time  a 
fresh  means  of  manipulating  experience.  Or,  if  his  sympathies  were  with 
the  past,  as  was  the  case  with  the  Neo-Platonists,  he  might  insist  upon 
the  old  symbols:  which  since  they  could  no  longer  mediate  an  experi- 
ence of  reality  in  the  present  would  become  a  myster}^,  to  be  understood 
only  by  some  rare  and  occult  means.  Thus  would  arise  a  type  of  mysti- 
cism, due  to  a  craving  to  make  real  to  oneself  intellectual  formulations 
which  are  taken  for  granted  but  which  do  not  really  fit  one's  experience. 
This  motive  which  was  doubtless  primal  with  the  Neo-Platonists  was 
operative  all  through  the  Middle  Ages.  Reverence  for  authority  led  to  a 
saddling  of  the  human  mind  with  Aristotelian  ideas  which  could  be 
appropriated  only  mystically,  if  at  all.  We  must  now  show  in  more 
detail  how  Neo-Platonic  mysticism  arose  from  the  adherence  to  ideas 
which  could  no  longer  function. 

The  mysticism  of  Neo-Platonism  centers  about  the  conception  of 
the  One,  which  is  the  highest  reality,  the  source  of  all  being,  absolute, 
imchangeable,  eternal.  It  is  beyond  all  determination,  all  manifoldness. 
Therefore  it  cannot  be  apprehended  by  the  intellect.  For  to  think  is 
to  Umit  and  to  apprehend  multiplicity.  The  experience  of  thinking  even 
the  One  still  contains  the  duality  of  subject  and  object.  FaiUng  the 
power  of  the  intellect  to  lay  hold  of  the  first  principle  of  all  things  we  must 
recognize  some  other  and  peculiar  mode  of  apprehending.  So  long  as 
there  is  duality  or  multipHcity  in  ourselves  we  evidently  cannot  experience 
unity.  "The  principle  of  all  things  not  having  any  difference,  is  always 
present,  but  we  are  present  with  it  when  we  have  no  difference."^  Such 
reflections  as  this  led  Plotinus  to  find  in  ecstasy,  or  a  state  of  conscious- 
ness utterly  devoid  of  all  cognitive  content  and  volitional  striving,  the 
actual  experience  of  contact  with  his  unitary  reality. 

'  Plotinus,  Ennead,  VI,  ix,  8. 


30  A  PSYCHOLOGICAL  INTERPRETATION  OF  MYSTICISM 

Now  the  doctrine  of  the  One  had  originally  crept  into  the  philosphy 
of  Plato  because  of  the  need  which  Plato  felt  of  bringing  some  sort  of 
organization  into  his  world  of  ideas.  The  philosophy  of  Plato  arose 
originally  from  the  practical  motive  of  finding  a  sure  basis  for  ethical 
conduct.  The  Sophists,  and  notably  Protagoras  had  assumed  that  per- 
ception is  the  only  source  of  knowledge.  Through  showing  that  per- 
ception is  relativistic  and  subjective  they  had  arrived  at  the  conclusion 
that  knowledge  can  have  no  universal  validity.  Nothing  can  be  appre- 
hended by  the  individual  but  phenomena.  Things  are  to  the  individual 
only  as  they  appear  to  him  and  not  as  they  are  in  themselves.  To 
Socrates  and  Plato  the  scepticism  and  laxity  thus  introduced  into  the 
world  of  knowledge  were  repugnant.  They  worked  out  in  opposition  to 
the  Sophistic  doctrine  a  distinction  between  perception  and  conception, 
admitting  with  the  Sophists  that  perception  is  fallacious,  but  insisting 
that  conception  alone  can  give  us  valid  knowledge.  For  conception 
selects  from  the  multitude  of  opinions  the  common  element,  that  in  which 
they  all  agree,  and  thus  gives  us  ideas  of  an  abiding  nature  as  over 
against  shifting  opinions.  Through  the  framing  of  these  general  ideas 
or  concepts  it  was  expected  that  a  sure  basis  for  conduct  would  be  dis- 
covered. But  this  emphasis  upon  a  surer  type  of  knowledge  brought 
with  it  impHcations  which  went  beyond  the  simple  ethical  end  which 
it  was  created  to  subserve.  For  Plato,  conception  revealed  a  world  of 
incorporeal  reality  existing  side  by  side  with  the  corporeal  world  which 
was  subject  to  opinion  only.  The  ideas  which  we  reach  by  conception 
are,  according  to  him,  just  that  system  of  immaterial  Being.  Further- 
more, not  only  ethical  ideas  exist  in  that  world,  but  ideas  of  every  class  of 
perceptions  of  which  we  are  cognizant.  The  problem  arose  for  Plato  as 
to  the  relation  of  the  various  denizens  of  this  world  with  one  another. 
In  attempting  to  determine  this  relation  he  goes  beyond  his  original 
ethical  interests  and  manifests  logical  and  metaphysical  interests  as  well. 
At  first  he  was  inclined  to  look  upon  the  relation  as  the  purely  logical 
one  of  class  concept  to  its  particulars.  The  ideas  were  to  be  arranged 
according  to  their  degree  of  generality.  The  world  of  ideas  would  thus 
resemble  a  pyramid  with  the  least  general  ideas  at  its  base  and  the  one 
widest  generalization  at  its  apex.  But  this  plan  does  not  seem  to  have 
been  carried  out  by  Plato,  doubtless  because  it  would  involve  the  presence 
of  all  kinds  of  things  in  his  eternal  world — ideas  of  things  undesirable  as 
well  as  desirable.  A  second  form  of  organization  for  the  ideas,  more 
favored  by  him,  grouped  the  subordinate  ideas  about  the  Idea  of  the 
Good  as  the  absolute  end  of  all  reality.    This  form  of  solution  of  his 


THE  DEVELOPMENT  OF  NEO-PLATONIC  MYSTICISM  31 

problem  is  teleological  rather  than  logical.  Yet  there  is  evidence  that 
Plato  was  not  entirely  satisfied  with  thus  leaving  aside  the  logical  question. 
For  in  his  latest  period  he  made  use  of  the  Pythagorean  number-theory 
to  express  the  relation  of  the  ideas  and  called  his  first  principle  "The 
One."  To  this  One  was  ascribed  the  highest  absolute  reality.  The  sub- 
ordinate ideas  were  then  thought  of  as  being  arranged  in  a  scale  of  con- 
stantly decreasing  worth  according  to  their  distance  from  the  One  in  the 
scale  of  numbers.  Thus  did  he  effect  a  certain  amalgamation  of  attri- 
butes of  worth  with  varying  degrees  of  reality,  so  uniting,  to  some  extent, 
his  metaphysical,  logical  and  ethical  interests. 

But  this  Pythagorean  conception  was  not  foundational  with  Plato 
and  he  did  not  deduce  from  it  the  conclusion  that  since  the  highest  reality 
is  one,  therefore,  it  cannot  be  experienced  outside  of  a  state  of  conscious- 
ness which  is  unique  in  being  a  state  of  unity  and  nothing  else.  It  is 
true  that  there  are  poetical  and  figurative  passages  in  the  dialogues  which 
have  a  mystical  ring  but  he  seems  nowhere  to  declare  explicitly  that  the 
highest  Idea  is  beyond  intellect.  Indeed  he  always  represents  intellect 
as  that  which  leads  to  the  Idea.  The  Idea  is  an  idea  to  the  last; and 
intellectual  insight  is  the  means  which  we  must  exercise  to  apprehend  it. 
Upon  this  conception  of  the  One,  which  was  really  something  of  a 
theoretical  stop-gap  in  Plato's  philosophy  the  Neo-Platonists  centered 
their  whole  system.  "All  beings  are  beings  through  the  One,"  begins 
the  skth  Ennead  of  Plotinus  which  treats  of  his  prime  principle.  The 
One  is  taken  for  granted.  It  is  the  starting  point,  not  an  inductively 
established  conclusion.  The  task  which  Plotinus  feels  incumbent  on 
him  is  to  show  how  all  things  depend  upon  and  are  to  be  derived  from 
the  One.  And  likewise  since  the  One  is  the  center  and  source  of  all 
worth  the  way  must  be  shown  of  attaining  to  it.  For  estrangement 
from  worth  is  not  congenial  to  the  soul  of  man.  The  way  of  attaining  it, 
as  we  have  already  indicated,  was  the  way  of  ecstasy.  But  this  mode 
of  attaining  to  highest  value  was  resorted  to  because,  as  we  now  proceed 
to  show,  the  conception  of  the  One  could  not  function  in  the  social 
situation  of  the  time  of  Plotinus. 

The  doctrine  of  the  One  could  not  minister  to  tlie  times  in  which  it 
was  elaborated.  In  its  conception  of  transcendence,  to  be  sure,  in  its 
notion  of  the  removedness  of  the  human  soul  from  the  One,  it  reflects  the 
great  problem  of  the  age,  the  feeling  of  a  split  between  value  and  experi- 
ence. But  this  way  of  formulating  the  problem  in  terms  of  a  self- 
contained  One  eternally  and  indifferently  radiating  its  derivations  in 
ever-expanding  circles  of  diminishing  worth  could  not  satisfy  the  funda- 


32  A  PSYCHOLOGICAL  INTERPRETATION  OF  MYSTICISM 

mental  need  of  the  time;  and  neither  could  it  function  in  furthering  man 
in  his  immediate  social  environment.  For  it  did  not  have  regard  for 
the  growing  sense  of  the  importance  of  personality  which  characterized 
the  age  and  for  the  longing  for  a  new  and  more  vital  social  relationship 
arising  from  the  general  breakup  and  decay  of  institutions  throughout 
the  Empire. 

Let  us  look  into  these  short-comings  in  more  detail.  In  regard  to 
the  deeper  reverence  for  personahty  Neo-Platonism  is  not  wholly  indiffer- 
ent. In  the  boundless  respect  of  the  disciples  for  their  several  masters, 
Plotinus,  Porphyry,  lamblichus  and  Proclus,  we  catch  a  manifestation 
of  the  spirit  of  the  time.  And  Plotinus  says  that  the  greatness  of  their 
origin  should  be  explained  to  those  souls  who  are  in  bondage  to  particular 
things,  i.  e.,  their  origin  in  the  One.  But  these  touches  of  appreciation 
of  the  worth  of  personality  cannot  make  up  for  the  omission  of  person- 
ality from  their  central  source  of  Being.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  Neo- 
Platonists  looked  upon  personality  as  a  Umiting  attribute  which  could  not 
properly  be  ascribed  to  their  unlimited  first  principle.  The  One  must 
be  beyond  personality  as  it  is  beyond  everything  else.  It  is  self-contained 
unregardful  of  its  irradiations  as  the  flower  is  heedless  of  its  fragrance. 
"It  does  not  aspire  after  us,  in  order  that  it  may  be  conversant  with  us."^ 
Hence  the  movement  of  the  One  toward  us  cannot  be  spoken  of  in  such 
a  personal  term  as  love.  We,  indeed,  must  learn  how  to  ascend  to  the 
divine  love  which  is  the  love  of  (i.  e.,  toward)  the  One,  but  the  One  sends 
forth  its  effulgence  as  lovelessly  as  the  fountain  pours  forth  its  waters. 
But  if  the  element  of  personality  is  left  out  of  the  principle  which  stands 
for  the  highest  values  we  have  a  conception  which  can  function  only 
in  certain  of  our  moods.  Modern  psychology  has  shown  us  that  the 
human  consciousness  has  been  built  up  in  terms  of  the  interaction  of 
personalities  with  one  another.  Its  values,  therefore,  are  fundamentally 
conceived  in  social  terms.  But  this  social  basis  of  life  seems  to  be  ignored 
by  the  Neo-Platonists  in  their  effort  to  pack  all  value  within  a  concept 
which  they  retained  from  the  past.  Practically  they  are  characterized 
by  an  indifference  to  social  and  poHtical  interests.  Plotinus  indeed 
recognizes  in  the  political  virtues  a  means  to  the  end  of  the  completest 
development  of  the  sage,  for  they  "make  the  soul  orderly  in  the  world 
of  mixture.'"  But  "the  perfect  hfe  of  the  sage  is  not  in  community 
but  in  detachment.  If  he  undertakes  practical  activity,  it  must  be  from 
some  plain  obligation,  and  the  attitude  of  detachment  ought  still  to  be 

'^  Ennead  VI,  ix,  8. 

'Whittaker,  T.,  The  N eo-Platonisls ,  p.  94. 


THE  DEVELOPMENT  OF  NEO-PLATONIC  MYSTICISM  33 

maintained  internally.  Neither  with  Plotinus  nor  with  any  of  his  suc- 
cessors is  there  the  least  doubt  that  the  contemplative  life  is  in  itself 
superior  to  the  life  of  action."'*  This  really  means  that  the  Neo-Platonic 
One  functions  only  for  the  philosopher  whose  chief  business  is  the  atti- 
tude of  contemplation,  or  for  others  only  in  their  contemplative  moods. 
As  for  guidance  in  our  actual  world  of  social  relationships  the  Neo-Platon- 
ists  have  no  word  of  encouragement  to  offer,  except  that  we  become 
detached  from  those  relationships,  as  the  One  is  detached  from  its 
dependents,  so  that  we  fulfill  our  duties  with  a  certain  sublime  indifference 
to  them,  utterly  wihout  the  show  of  anxious  personal  interest. 

But  this  impersonal  nonsocial  attitude  could  not  satisfy  the  needs  of 
that  age.  It  is  an  attitude  of  turning  away  from  the  decaying  social 
order  of  the  present  without  making  any  attempt  to  contribute  to  a  new 
one.  A  new  social  consciousness  had  to  be  developed,  one  that  would 
mediate  successful  relations  between  peoples  dra^vn  from  all  over  the 
then-known  world  and  brought  into  contact  by  the  Roman  conquests. 
It  is  evident  from  the  later  history  of  Neo-Platonism  with  its  astounding 
eclecticism  of  deities  from  every  source  that  the  school  was  not  unaware 
of  the  need  and  tried  to  bring  about  a  reconcilation  between  peoples  by 
finding  room  within  their  scheme  for  every  sort  of  a  religion  as  a  par- 
ticular form  of  manifestation  of  the  One.  But  this  external  amalgam  of 
the  value-symbols  of  limited  social  groups  could  not  serve  for  a  new 
conception  truly  symbolic  of  the  new  social  order.  And  as  to  the  One 
itself  it  was  powerless  to  create  helpful  social  attitudes  because  its  very 
impersonalism  made  it  nonsocial.  It  has  been  shown  by  Professor  Ames^ 
that  those  concepts  which  serve  as  the  fundamental  and  truly  effective 
symbols  of  religion  are  really  representative  of  the  highest  social  values 
of  the  group  in  which  they  are  developed.  The  same  author  points  out 
elsewhere^  that  being  such  embodiments  these  concepts  must  be  "in  the 
highest  degree  personal."  Especially  will  they  be  personal  in  character 
in  a  highly  organized  society.  "If  our  conscious  experience  is  through 
and  through  a  social  affair  so  that  the  very  objects  of  physical  nature 
are  determined  by  it,  it  is  inevitable  that  the  object  of  the  group  con- 
sciousness should  be  personal  and  social."''  These  considerations  show 
at  once  why  the  fundamental  conception  of  Neo-Platonism  could  not 
function  in  mediating  an  actual  experience  of  reality.     It  did  not  symbo- 

*  Ibid.,  p.  94. 

'  The  Psychology  of  Religiovis  Experience. 

*  Social  Consciousness  and  its  Object,  Psychological  Bulletin,  Vol.  VIII,  p.  414. 
»76«f.,  p.  415. 


34  A  PSYCHOLOGICAL  INTERPRETATION  OF  MYSTICISM 

lize  social  values  at  all,  at  least  not  the  values  of  the  social  order  of  that 
period.  There  was  no  reciprocity  of  social  attitudes  between  the  One 
and  the  individual. 

We  are  able  to  bring  out  the  insufficiency  of  the  Neo-Platonic 
conception  by  comparison  with  the  chief  conception  of  another  kind  of 
thought  which  proved  its  greater  effectiveness  in  the  actual  course  of 
history.  Christianity,  from  the  start,  emphasized  the  personality  of  God. 
"Christianity,  as  a  living  religion,  demands  a  personal  relation  of  man 
to  the  ground  of  the  world  conceived  of  as  supreme  personality,  and  it 
expresses  this  demand  in  the  thought  of  the  divine  sonship  of  man."^ 
The  conception  of  God  as  Father  and  the  cognate  conception  of  Love 
as  the  bond  of  connection  between  the  Father  and  the  children  as  well  as 
between  the  children  with  one  another  served  effectually  to  bring  the 
experience  of  reality  right  into  the  social  relationships  of  the  church  com- 
mimity.  It  was  undoubtedly  because  it  enabled  individuals  to  realize 
within  the  church  itself  an  actual  experience  of  the  unity  of  humanity  in 
one  brotherhood  that  the  idea  showed  itself  to  be  dynamic.  The  spirit 
of  love  within  the  group  made  real  to  the  believer  the  presence  of  the 
Father.  Neo-Platonism  had  nothing  to  correspond  to  this  experience. 
The  School  was  not  a  company  of  children  bound  together  by  a  con- 
sciousness of  relation  to  a  common  Father,  but  rather  a  group  of  indi- 
viduals, emanations  from  a  single  metaphysical  source,  seeking  each  for 
himself  to  return  singly  to  metaphysical  union  with  the  One  "a  flight 
of  the  alone  to  the  alone,"  as  Plotinus  calls  it  at  the  close  of  the  sixth 
Ennead.  The  Unity  of  Plotinus  was  thus  an  abstract  idea  without 
definite  living  attachments  and  as  such  failed  to  reach  the  actual  social 
needs  of  the  time. 

As  a  result  of  the  separation  of  the  One  from  the  social  process  itself, 
it  followed  that  the  only  way  to  attain  to  it  and  to  its  unpicturable  highest 
values  was  to  rise  above  the  distractions  of  social  relationships.  Plotinus 
allowed,  as  we  have  mentioned  before,  a  certain  efficacy  to  the  exercise 
of  the  civic  virtues  on  the  lowest  stage  of  aspiration  toward  the  Good 
which  is  the  One.  But  these  as  well  as  the  higher  toil  of  intellectual 
formulation  which  was  next  to  be  followed  were  to  be  superseded  by  a 
contemplation  in  which  the  soul  was  to  become  detached  and  alone. 
**He  will  not  behold  this  Hght,  who  attempts  to  ascend  to  the  vision  of 
the  supreme  while  he  is  drawn  downwards  by  those  things  which  are  an 
impediment  to  the  vision.  He  will  likewise  not  ascend  by  himself  alone, 
but  will  be  accompanied  by  that  which  will  divulse  him  from  the  One, 
*  Windelband,  W.,  History  of  Philosophy,  Tufts'  translation,  p.  238. 


THE  DEVELOPMENT  OF  NEO-PLATONIC  MYSTICISM  35 

or  rather  he  will  not  be  himself  collected  into  a  one He, 

therefore,  who  has  not  yet  arrived  thither,  but  either  on  account  of  the 
above-mentioned  obstacle  is  deprived  of  this  vision,  or  through  the  want 
of  reason  which  may  conduct  him  to  it,  and  impart  faith  respecting  it; 
such  a  one  may  consider  himself  as  the  cause  of  his  disappointment 
through  these  impediments,  and  should  endeavour  by  separating  himself 
from  all  things  to  be  alone."^  It  is  very  evident  that  the  value  to  which 
Plotinus  here  points  is  not  something  to  be  found  in  the  give  and  take 
of  human  relationships  but  something  esoteric  and  private.  As  a  pecu- 
liar experience  it  is  attained  only  after  considerable  effort.  The  actual 
historical  facts  in  regard  to  it  indicate  that  it  was  no  frequent  phenom- 
enon. "  Porphyry  has  something  to  tell  us  on  this  subject.  Four  times 
while  he  was  with  him,  he  relates,  Plotinus  attained  the  end  of  union  with 
God,  who  is  over  all,  without  form,  above  intellect,  and  all  the  intelli- 
gible. Porphyry  himself  attained  this  union  once,  in  his  sixty-eighth 
year.  The  mystical  'ecstasy'  was  not  found  by  the  later  teachers  of  the 
school  easier  to  attain,  but  more  difficult;  and  the  tendency  became  more 
and  more  to  regard  it  as  all  but  unattainable  on  earth."^*^  The  increasing 
difficulty  of  reaching  the  ecstatic  experience  shows  how  widely  the  first 
principle  had  been  removed  from  the  actual  human  experience  in  which 
it  should  have  functioned.  The  conceived  highest  good  was  set  so  far 
above  the  normal  channels  for  receiving  good  that  it  was  to  be  appre- 
hended, if  at  all,  only  by  highly  unusual  methods  and  moods. 

So  far  we  have  attempted  to  indicate  the  influence  of  environment  in 
evoking  Neo-Platonic  mysticism,  or,  more  precisely,  the  influence  of  the 
conflict  of  the  immediate  environment  with  the  thought  environment 
derived  from  the  past  Hellenic  philosophy.  The  projection  of  the  latter 
into  the  former  caused  a  split  between  value  and  experience  which  Plo- 
tinus sought  to  overcome  by  the  mystical  solution.  Incidentally  we 
may  say  that  the  thought  of  Philo  manifests  the  same  combination  of 
things — a  mysticism  arising  from  maintaining  earlier  formulations  of  value 
in  the  midst  of  a  social  order  which  called  for  a  restatement  in  terms  of 
newly  developing  values.  It  would  seem  that  this  mysticism  has  its 
roots  primarily  in  intellectual  sources.  In  both  cases  it  is  pressed  out 
by  the  strain  endured  by  a  certain  class  of  thinkers  in  clinging  to  the 
intellectual  formulations  of  value  which  the  ongoing  social  process  was 
slowly  but  surely  out-growing  and  pushing  aside. 

» Ennead  VI,  ix,  4. 

"  Whittaker,  The  Neo-Platonists,  p.  101. 


36  A  PSYCHOLOGICAL  INTERPRETATION  OF  MYSTICISM 

The  environmental  situation  then,  the  expanding  social  consciousness 
is  the  great  factor  which  we  have  tried  to  see  in  the  production  of  Neo- 
Platonic  mysticism.  We  must  suppose  that  the  other  factors  were  at 
work  likewise.  But  we  do  not  have  sufficient  detailed  information  in 
regard  to  the  personal  lives  of  the  Neo-Platonists  to  trace  the  contribution 
made  by  temperamental  sensitivity  and  the  instinct  complexes  with  any 
degree  of  thoroughness.  We  have  some  hints,  however,  to  show  us  that  in 
the  case  of  Plotinus  the  temperamental  factor  played  its  role.  It  is 
through  Plotinus  that  Neo-Platonism  has  been  connected  with  mysticism. 
He  was  the  real  founder  of  the  movement.  Few,  therefore,  as  our  facts 
are  at  this  juncture  they  are  yet  worth  considering.  As  Ruf  us  Jones 
remarks,  "Popular  anecdotes  about  him  give  the  impression  that  he  was 
a  man  of  unusual  psychical  disposition.""  It  is  told  of  him  that  in 
composition  "when  he  had  once  conceived  the  whole  disposition  of  his 
thoughts  from  the  beginning  to  the  end,  and  had  afterwards  committed 
them  to  writing,  his  composition  was  so  connected  that  he  seemed  to  be 
merely  transcribing  from  a  book."  He  seemed  to  be  able  to  carry  on  a 
strain  of  abstract  thought  while  discharging  the  matters  of  daily  business. 
He  was  supposed  to  have  a  God  for  a  guardian  spirit  and  at  times  seems 
to  have  spoken  as  under  a  kind  of  inspiration. ^^  Whatever  the  actual 
facts  may  have  been  back  of  these  tales  that  have  come  down  to  us  they 
indicate  that  Plotinus  made  an  impression  on  those  surrounding  him  of 
having  unique  powers.  We  cannot  be  far  wrong  if  we  conclude  that  to 
Plotinus  belonged  that  enhanced  sensitivity  which  we  noted  in  the  last 
chapter  as  one  of  the  factors  which  contribute  to  a  ready  development  of 
the  mystical  attitude.  Such  a  sensitivity  would  account  for  the  fact 
that  the  meditation  of  Plotinus  passed  more  readily  to  the  stage  of  mys- 
tical concentration  than  did  the  devotional  practices  of  his  followers. 

Neo-Platonism  nowhere  offers  an  explicit  technique  of  mystical 
practice  such  as  we  find  later  in  the  Middle  Ages.  This  was  due  to  the 
fact  that  the  experience  was  yet  in  an  experimental  stage.  The  factors 
of  concentration,  monoideism,  monotony,  etc.,  which  we  have  indicated 
in  the  last  chapter  were  but  dimly  and  gropingly  sensed.  But  they  were 
undoubtedly  involved  in  the  attempt  to  apprehend  the  One,  first  by 
getting  the  most  perfect  conceptual  image  of  it  and  then  realizing  that  it 
transcends  even  conception.  One  would  have  to  go  into  a  trance  state 
to  attain  to  so  undifferentiated  a  state  of  consciousness  as  is  implied  in 

"  Studies  in  Mystical  Religion,  p.  71. 

*2  See  the  condensation  of  Porphyry's  Life  of  Plotinus,  by  Thomas  Taylor  in  his 
Select  Works  oj  Plotinus. 


THE  DEVELOPMENT  OF  NEO-PLATONIC  MYSTICISM  37 

Plotinus's  descriptions  of  union  with  the  One.  The  concentration  of 
attention  upon  the  One,  the  quieting  of  the  soul  of  all  desire,  the  exclusion 
of  all  corporeal  impressions,  the  monotonous  unitariness  of  the  One — 
all  these  suggestions  imply  the  conditions  of  auto-hypnosis  which  we  set 
forth  earlier. 

Neo-Platonism  has  shown  us  a  mysticism  arising  from  a  conflict  within 
the  environing  social  consciousness.  To  illustrate  a  mysticism  arising 
more  directly  from  unopposed  social  suggestion  and  one  which  reveals 
well  the  power  of  instinctive  and  temperamental  forces  as  well  as  of  the 
environment  we  turn  to  the  case  of  St.  Teresa. 


CHAPTER  III 

The  Case  of  St.  Teresa 

We  have  said  in  Chapter  I  that  there  are  three  cardinal  factors 
involved  in  the  development  of  the  mystical  consciousness:  the  human 
instincts,  a  temperament  of  enhanced  sensitivity  and  an  environment 
which  fosters  a  sense  of  separation  between  ordinary  everyday  experience 
and  the  world  of  values.  We  have  tried  to  show  how  important  a  role 
was  played  by  the  third  factor  in  Neo-Platonic  mysticism.  Turning 
now  to  a  later  time  in  the  history  of  mysticism  we  find  St.  Teresa  a 
fitting  illustration  of  the  workings  of  the  whole  trio  of  factors.  The 
autobiography  of  this  famous  character,  remarkable  from  more  than  one 
standpoint,  has  long  been  and  will  doubtless  continue  to  be  one  of  the 
classic  documents  of  mysticism.  We  here  find  mystical  tendencies  devel- 
oped to  the  extremest  point  compatible  with  sanity  and  the  effective 
discharge  of  duty;  a  keenness  of  introspection  and  self -analysis  seldom 
equaled;  and  the  ingenuousness  of  a  spirit  not  particularly  learned  in 
books.  It  has  the  further  advantage  of  being  voluminous  and  detailed 
even  to  the  point  of  tediousness.  St.  Teresa's  scrupulous  care  in  recount- 
ing her  experiences  is  evidenced  by  the  fact  that  although  she  wrote  her 
biography  at  the  dictate  of  her  superiors  she  did  not  hesitate  to  differ  with 
conventional  ideas  of  devotional  practice  when  her  own  experiences 
seemed  to  contradict  them. 

The  outstanding  facts  of  the  life  of  St.  Teresa  are  too  familiar  to 
need  more  than  a  brief  statement.  St.  Teresa  (1515-1582)  was  born  in 
Avila,  Spain.  Reared  in  a  household  imbued  with  the  religious  ideas  of 
the  time,  she  early  became  acquainted  with  the  Lives  of  the  Saints  and 
at  the  age  of  seven  tried  to  run  away  with  one  of  her  brothers,  the  intent 
of  the  children  being  to  suffer  martyrdom  among  the  Moors.  A  year  and 
a  half  of  her  girlhood  was  spent  in  an  Augustinian  monastery  and  some- 
where near  her  twentieth  year  she  became  a  nun  in  the  Monastery  of  the 
Incarnation  in  Avila.  Her  devotional  life  was  marked  by  various  unu- 
sual psychic  manifestations  such  as  visions,  trances,  and  ecstasies  as  well 
as  much  suffering  due  in  part  to  her  psychological  make-up  and  in  part 
to  misapprehension  of  her  experiences  by  her  spiritual  directors.  In  her 
forty-seventh  year,  dissatisfied  with  the  laxity  which  prevailed  through- 
out the  Carmelite  order  and  encouraged  by  some  persons  around  her  she 
undertook  the  founding  of  a  new  monastery  which  should  be  conducted 
in  accordance  with  the  earlier  and  stricter  rules  of  the  Order.  From 
this  time  to  the  end  of  her  fife  she  devoted  her  efforts  to  founding  the 
reformed  order  of  the  Barefooted  Carmelites.     During  her  lifetime  she 


THE  CASE  OF  ST.  TERESA  39 

saw  the  founding  of  fifteen  monasteries  for  friars  and  seventeen  monas- 
teries for  nuns  as  a  result  of  her  reform. 

That  St.  Teresa  possesses  the  finer  sensitivity  which  furnishes  the 
soil  for  the  development  of  the  mystical  consciousness,  there  can  be  no 
doubt.  The  story  of  that  part  of  her  life  before  her  entrance  into  the 
monastery  as  a  professed  nun  gives  the  impression  of  a  bright,  vivacious 
soul,  social  even  to  a  fault — according  to  her  own  estimation — and  readily 
influenced  by  those  for  whom  she  felt  regard  and  affection.  Physically 
she  was  not  strong  and  may  have  inherited  her  physical  condition  from 
her  mother,  whose  life,  she  says,  "was  spent  in  great  infirmities,"  and 
who  died  young,  in  Teresa's  twelfth  year.  It  seems  that  after  her  moth- 
er's death  Teresa  was  placed  in  an  Augustinian  monastery  because  her 
father  and  elder  sister  wished  to  place  her  beyond  the  influence  of  certain 
friendships  which  were  not  for  her  good.  Teresa  speaks  of  a  relative 
"who  was  so  light  and  frivolous,  that  my  mother  took  great  pains  to  keep 
her  out  of  the  house,  as  if  she  foresaw  the  evil  I  should  learn  from  her; 
but  she  could  not  succeed,  there  being  so  many  reasons  for  her  coming."^ 
After  mentioning  the  later  distress  of  her  father  and  sister  over  the  matter 
she  adds,  "The  conversation  of  this  person  so  changed  me,  that  no  trace 
was  left  of  my  soul's  natural  disposition  to  virtue,  and  I  became  a  reflec- 
tion of  her  and  of  another  who  was  given  to  the  same  kind  of  amuse- 
ments."2  The  quick  sensitiveness  of  Teresa  which  made  her  thus  sus- 
ceptible to  the  influence  of  her  friends  also  enabled  her  to  penetrate  the 
design  of  her  father  and  sister,  so  that  she  saw  at  once  that  she  could  not 
quite  be  trusted  with  her  own  ways  in  her  father's  house.  She  was  much 
mortified  and  remarks  that  "for  the  first  eight  days  I  suffered  much;  but 
more  from  the  suspicion  that  my  vanity  was  known,  than  from  being  in 
the  monastery."  She  soon  found,  however,  a  new  friend  in  the  person 
of  the  nun  who  was  mistress  of  the  secular  children  who  were  in  the 
monastery.  Straightway,  the  ready  sympathy  and  appreciation  of  the 
saint-to-be  turned  into  the  new  channels  thus  afforded.  "This  good 
companionship  began  to  root  out  the  habits  which  bad  companionship 
had  formed,  and  to  bring  my  thoughts  back  to  the  desire  of  eternal  things. 
.  .  .  .  :  if  I  saw  any  one  weep  in  prayer,  or  devout  in  any  other  way, 
I  envied  her  very  much."^  These  incidents,  simple  as  they  are,  indicate 
the  responsiveness  of  the  saint  to  her  environment.  It  was  this  delicate 
sensitiveness  and  impressionability  which  facilitated  the  development  of 
'  Life  of  St.  Teresa,  written  by  herself,  Chap.  II,  par.  4. 

2  Life,  Chap.  II,  5. 

3  Life,  Chap.  Ill,  1. 


40  A  PSYCHOLOGICAL  INTERPRETATION  OF  MYSTICISM 

the  rich  and  deep  subconscious  store  whence  issued  the  surprising  experi- 
ences which  were  so  puzzUng  to  St.  Teresa's  directors  in  later  hfe  and  at 
times  even  to  the  saint  herself. 

In  thus  admitting  a  foundational  sensitivity  which  favors  the  devel- 
opment of  the  mystical  consciousness  we  are  not  implying  an  inherent 
bias  in  the  direction  of  mystical  experiences.  The  illustrations  show  that 
Teresa's  susceptibility  was  ready  to  be  influenced  by  any  environment. 
But  it  so  happened  that  her  most  persistent  environment  was  the  essen- 
tially religious  one.     Upon  this  point  we  shall  enlarge  below. 

Just  why  St.  Teresa  should  have  a  temperament  of  enhanced  sensi- 
tivity we  are  unable  to  say.  The  psychology  of  temperament  has  not  yet 
been  sufficiently  worked  out  to  afford  us  much  help  in  the  explanation  of 
this  fact.  The  modern  conjecture  is  that  the  general  constitution  of  the 
nervous  system  and  the  mode  of  functioning  of  the  bodily  organs  have 
considerable  to  do  with  temperament.  McDougaU  points  out  that  "of 
recent  years  some  light  has  been  thrown  upon  temperament  by  the  dis- 
covery of  the  great  influence  exerted  on  mental  life  by  certain  organs 
whose  functions  had  been,  and  in  many  respects  still  are,  obscure.  "The 
most  notable  example  is  perhaps  the  thyroid  body,  a  small  mass  of  soft 
cellular  tissue  in  the  neck.  We  know  now  that  defect  of  the  functions 
of  this  organ  may  reduce  any  one  of  us  to  a  state  of  mental  apathy  bor- 
dering on  idiocy,  and  that  its  excessive  activity  produces  the  opposite 
effect  and  may  throw  the  mind  into  an  over-excitable  condition  verging 
on  maniacal  excitement.  Again  we  know  that  certain  diseases  tend  to 
produce  specific  changes  of  temperament,  that  pthisis  often  gives  it  a 
bright  and  hopeful  turn,  diabetes  a  dissatisfied  and  cantankerous  turn.  It 
is  clear  that,  in  some  cases  of  profound  alteration  of  temperament  by  bodily 
disorder,  the  effects  are  produced  by  means  of  the  chemical  products  of 
metabolism,  which,  being  thrown  out  of  the  disordered  tissues  into  the 
blood  and  reaching  the  nervous  system  by  way  of  the  blood  stream,  chemi- 
cally modify  its  processes.  It  is  probable  that  every  organ  in  the  body 
exerts  in  this  way  some  influence  upon  our  mental  life,  and  that  tempera- 
ment is  in  a  large  measure  the  balance  or  resultant  of  all  these  many  con- 
tributory chemical  influences."* 

We  have,  of  course,  no  adequate  description  of  the  physiological  con- 
stitution of  St.  Teresa  which  would  enable  us  to  trace  her  hyper-sensi- 
tivity to  a  definite  cause  either  in  her  nervous  system  or  the  exceptional 
functioning  of  specific  bodily  organs.  Attempts  have  been  made  to 
classify  her  as  an  hysterical  or  an  epileptic  or  an  hystero-epileptic  on  the 

*  Social  Psychology,  p.  117. 


THE  CASE  OF  ST.  TERESA  41 

basis  of  symptoms  described  in  her  autobiography.  But  it  is  a  question 
whether  any  of  these  are  entirely  satisfactory.  Even  so  great  an  author- 
ity as  Janet,  who  calls  St.  Teresa  the  ''patron  saint  of  hystericals"  in  his 
earlier  work,  The  Mental  State  of  Hystericals,  finds  his  judgment  shaken 
after  having  studied  minutely  the  case  of  a  live  ecstatic  in  his  own  hos- 
pital.5  But  waiving  the  attempt  to  locate  an  exact  physiological  or 
pathological  basis  for  her  sensitivity,  we  may  feel  sure  that  ill-health 
played  no  small  part  in  enhancing  it  by  producing  an  inward-looking 
attitude.  For,  to  quote  McDougall  again,  "perfect  functioning  of  all 
bodily  organs  not  only  favors  mental  activity  in  general,  but  tends  to  an 
objective  habit  of  mind;  whereas  imperfection  of  organic  functions  tends 
to  produce  an  undue  prominence  in  consciousness  of  the  bodily  self  and 
therefore,  an  introspective  and  brooding  habit  of  mind."^  This  principle 
is  seen  early  at  work  in  the  life  of  St.  Teresa.  The  rigorous  life  of  the 
Augustinian  monastery  proved  too  much  for  the  delicately-reared  young 
girl  and  at  the  end  of  a  year  and  a  half  her  stay  was  ended  by  a  "serious 
illness."  Of  the  nature  of  this  illness  we  are  not  told,  but  Teresa  seemed 
to  regard  it  as  influential  in  turning  her  thoughts  more  definitely  to  graver 
matters.  "At  this  time,"  she  writes,  "though  I  was  not  careless  about 
my  own  good.  Our  Lord  was  much  more  careful  to  dispose  me  for  that 
state  of  life  which  was  best  for  me.  He  sent  me  a  serious  illness,  so  that  I 
was  obliged  to  return  to  my  father's  house.  "^  It  was  during  the  three 
months  following  this  illness  that  she  resolved  to  become  a  nun.  The 
decision  was  gradual  and  not  without  considerable  mward  debate.  Her 
health  was  never  entirely  restored.  She  speaks  of  fainting  fits  attended 
with  fever  as  coming  at  this  time:  and  her  first  year  at  the  Monastery 
of  the  Incarnation  which  she  entered  a  few  months  later  was  one  of 
definite  ill-health.  "The  fainting  fits  began  to  be  more;  and  my  heart 
was  so  seriously  affected,  that  every  one  who  saw  it  was  alarmed;  and  I 

also  had  many  other  ailments I  was  almost  insensible  at 

times. "^  Certainly  if  physical  disturbance  has  the  effect  of  turning  our 
attention  inward  upon  our  feelings  St.  Teresa  had  enough  experience  of 
the  kind  in  those  days  to  lead  her  into  that  habit  of  profound  internal 
scrutiny  which  we  have  noted  as  characteristic  of  the  mystics  generally.^ 

'  See  The  Mental  State  of  Hystericals,  Eng.  tr.  p.  128,  and  his  article  "Une  Extati- 
que"  in  the  Bulletin  de  L'Institut  Psychologique,  1901,  p.  209. 
'Social  Psychology,  p.  119. 
» Life,  Chap.  Ill,  1. 
8  Life,  Chap.  IV,  6. 
'  See  above  Chap.  I,  p.  11  ff. 


42         A  PSYCHOLOGICAL  INTERPRETATION  OF  MYSTICISM 

As  further  evidence  along  the  same  line  we  may  cite  the  fact  that  it  was  in 
the  midst  of  these  infirmities  that  she  began  to  find  certain  forms  of  prayer 
easy  for  her.  After  reading  a  certain  book  which  treated  of  the  prayer  of 
recollection  she  began  to  use  it  as  a  guide.  "Our  Lord  began  to  comfort 
me  so  much  in  this  way  of  prayer,  as  in  his  mercy  to  raise  me  to  the  prayer 
of  quiet,  and  now  and  then  to  that  of  union,  though  I  understood  not  what 
either  the  one  or  the  other  was,  nor  the  great  esteem  I  ought  to  have  had 
of  them."  It  is  not  impossible  that  the  facilitation  which  she  experienced 
with  reference  to  this  prayer  of  recollection  was  due  to  a  growing  power  of 
inner  discernment  hastened  by  her  illness.  But  whether  or  not  we  can 
trace  St.  Teresa's  sensitiveness  to  a  physiological  base  either  in  her  early 
illnesses  or  in  a  constitution  weak  from  the  begining  we  must  recognize 
it  as  a  factor — a  delicate  appreciativeness  and  responsiveness  which  is 
manifested  in  the  artist  and  poet  as  well  as  the  saint.  The  significance  of 
this  factor  in  a  functional  interpretation  is  that  while  the  Uving  social 
environment  shapes  and  directs  the  attention  of  the  individual,  thus 
ultimately  determining  the  type  of  consciousness,  the  degree  of  receptive- 
ness  and  responsiveness  which  characterizes  him  plays  a  by  no  means 
negligible  part  in  determining  the  fullness  with  which  the  social  order 
expresses  itself  through  the  individual.  It  is  the  contribution  which  the 
individual  himself  makes.  This  capacity  for  reaction  to  the  finer,  more 
subtle,  more  ideal  aspects  of  the  environment  is  no  doubt  further  stimu- 
lated and  developed  by  the  persistence  of  certain  features  of  the  environ- 
ment. That  is  to  say,  a  constant  kind  of  stimulation  is  afforded  which  in 
time  calls  forth  an  habitual  response.  Thus  in  the  case  of  St.  Teresa  the 
constant  presence  of  the  conception  of  the  transcendence  of  God  and  the 
nothingness  of  this  world,  which  filled  the  religious  thinking  of  her  day 
must  have  fostered  in  her  the  reaction  of  striving  to  get  beyond  this 
world  of  secular  experience,  a  reaction  which  refined  itself  with  increas- 
ingly delicate  nuances  of  adjustment.  Yet  this  continual  stimulation 
cannot  be  the  entire  explanation.  For  many  others  who  were  subjected 
to  the  same  stimulation  failed  of  an  equal  degree  of  reaction.  We  cannot 
avoid,  therefore,  the  postulation  of  an  initial  sensitivity  in  her  case, 
which  contributed  materially  to  the  degree  of  her  mystical  development. 
We  repeat  once  more  that  this  view  does  not  commit  us  to  the  assump- 
tion of  a  mystical  instinct  or  instinct  for  transcendence.  For  the  same 
responsiveness  would  have  developed  a  notably  different  kind  of  con- 
sciousness in  surroundings  of  a  different  quality. 

Turning  now  from  the  factor  of  temperament,  which  we  have  con- 
sidered first  in  order,  we  pass  next  to  the  part  played  by  the  instincts  in 


THE  CASE  OF  ST.  TERESA  43 

the  development  of  the  mystical  life  of  St.  Teresa.  Here  we  may  watch 
the  struggle  for  organization,  the  gradual  modification  and  integration 
of  the  fundamental  human  tendencies  into  a  unified  and  consistent  self. 
In  this  matter  of  developing  a  unified  personality  Teresa,  with  all  the 
mystics,  simply  shares  the  general  problem  of  the  race.  We  all  of  us, 
even  as  they,  feel  the  imperative  need  of  moulding  the  sum  total  of  our 
tendencies  into  a  working  harmony  with  reference  to  some  chosen  end. 
But  their  specific  distinction  lies  in  the  fact  that  the  end  striven  for  is 
the  sense  of  unification  grasped  as  an  experience  in  itself.  That  is,  the 
end  is  not  organization  with  reference  to  this  or  that  objective  attain- 
ment, but  absolute  union,  absolute  simplification  for  its  own  sake.^** 
The  mystic,  to  be  sure,  represents  this  union  to  himself  under  the  symbol- 
ism of  a  direct  contact  with  deity,  so  that  at  first  he  seems  to  have  an 
objective  end  in  the  conception  of  God.  But  we  must  not  lose  sight  of 
the  significant  fact  that  he  tests  his  attainment  of  his  idea  solely  by  the 
experience  of  unification  itself.  The  ordinary  work-a-day  person  tests 
his  success  in  achieving  an  organized  personality  by  his  actual  efficiency 
in  efifectmg  his  external  object.  We  shall  discuss,  as  far  as  we  are 
able,  the  great  tendencies  at  work  in  the  life  of  St.  Teresa  and  her 
means  of  harmonizing  them. 

The  early  years  of  St.  Teresa  show  her  to  have  been  an  affectionate 
child  with  a  taste  for  the  picturesque  and  the  romantic.  Her  childhood 
was  very  like  that  of  any  normal  child.  She  liked  stories  and  at  a  very 
early  age  used  to  read  the  Lives  of  the  Saints  with  one  of  her  brothers. 
The  two  children  once  set  off  to  find  martyrdom  somehow  at  the  hands 
of  the  Moors  but  were  espied  and  brought  home  by  their  uncle.  They 
then  had  to  find  other  outlet  for  their  interest.  "As  soon  as  I  saw  that 
it  was  impossible  to  go  to  any  place  where  people  would  put  me  to  death 
for  the  sake  of  God,  my  brother  and  I  set  about  becoming  hermits;  and 
in  an  orchard  belonging  to  the  house  we  contrived,  as  well  as  we  could,  to 
build  hermitages,  by  piling  up  small  stones  one  on  the  other,  which  fell 
down  immediately;  and  so  it  came  to  pass  that  we  found  no  means  of 

accomplishing  our  wish I  gave  alms  as  I  could — and  I  could 

but  little.     I  contrived  to  be  alone,  for  the  sake  of  saying  my  prayers — 

and   they  were  many — especially  the  Rosary I  used   to 

delight  exceedingly,  when  playing  with  other  children,  in  the  building 
of  monasteries,  as  if  they  were  nuns;  and  I  think  I  wished  to  be  a  nun 
though  not  so  much  as  I  did  to  be  a  martyr  or  a  hermit.  "^^    All  of  this 

"  See  p.  12. 

•'  Life,  Chap.  I,  6. 


44  A  PSYCHOLOGICAL, INTERPRETATION  OF  MYSTICISM 

reveals  nothing  more  than  the  playful  spirit  of  childhood  imitating  what 
models  the  environment  afforded.  Years  afterward,  the  saint  looked  back 
with  approval  upon  these  simple-hearted  expressions  of  the  instincts  of 
childhood? 

But  as  adolescence  came  on  Teresa  began  to  show  tendencies  which 
became  later  the  cause  of  eloquent  regret.  She  fell  to  reading  books  of 
chivalry  and  romance,  to  giving  elaborate  care  to  her  personal  appear- 
ance, to  conversing  with  her  cousins  about  their  "affections  and  childish 
foUies,"  to  spending  time  with  the  light  and  frivolous  relative,  before 
mentioned.^^  To  the  modern  reader  these  interests  seem  normal  enough 
and,  in  fact  characteristic  of  almost  any  child  of  her  years.  He  sees 
here  the  usual  budding  of  the  self-consciousness,  the  vanity,  the  affecta- 
tion and  the  widening  social  feeling  which  mark  the  maturing  of  the 
sex  impulse.  But  to  St.  Teresa,  reared  in  an  atmosphere  in  which  the 
ascetic  ideals  of  the  Middle  Ages  were  still  vital,  these  unfoldings  of  her 
nature  appeared  wicked  and  perverse.  Such  was  her  later  definite  in- 
terpretation and  such  was  her  dim  feeling  about  them  even  at  that 
early  period  whenever  her  thoughts  were  turned  to  religious  ideals.  To 
her  the  religious  life  meant,  even  in  childhood,  the  attainment  of  the 
"vision  of  God,"  and  reading  romances,  talking  of  light  matters,  and 
using  perfumery  meant  "the  world."^^  To  a  sensitive  child  such  as  she 
was,  keenly  apprehensive  of  those  ideals  which  were  accounted  highest 
by  the  society  in  which  she  moved,  it  is  not  surprising  that  there  should 
come  early  that  feeling  of  division  in  her  inner  life  between  the  ideal  on 
the  one  hand  and  the  world  of  actual  experience  on  the  other.  The 
feeling  was  enhanced  later  when  she  entered  the  conventual  life  in 
earnest.  For  there  she  looked  upon  herself  as  bound  to  aspire  after  a 
state  of  soul  of  the  utmost  purity — which,  of  course,  meant  the  striving 
for  an  absolute  inner  unity  and  calm. 

But  in  the  monastery  the  conflict  between  tendencies  thus  set  over 
against  one  another  went  on  in  subtle  ways.  The  Monastery  of  the 
Incarnation  was  following  a  mitigated  rule  and  the  inmates  were  allowed 
considerable  hberty  in  some  matters.  The  young  Teresa  because  of 
her  exemplary  life  was  allowed  the  privileges  of  the  older  nuns  and 
received  visits  from  some  of  her  female  friends  in  the  city.  But  social 
conversation  had  the  usual  effect  of  turning  the  attention  to  miscel- 
laneous matters,  as  well  as  fostering  in  the  nun  a  self-consciousness  which 
was  not  in  keeping  with  the  sort  of  religious  life  which  she  professed. 

>2  Life,  Chap.  III. 

»  Life,  Chap.  I,  4  and  Chap.  Ill,  5. 


THE  CASE  or  ST.  TERESA  45 

She  found  her  sociability  an  injury  and  a  dissipation.  She  calls  it  a 
pestilent  amusement  and  a  distraction.  Especially  was  her  inner  life 
disintegrated  by  the  visits  of  one  person  in  particular.  "No  one  caused 
me  the  same  distraction  which  that  person  did  of  whom  I  am  speaking; 
and  that  was  because  I  had  a  great  affection  for  her."^* 

After  some  eight  years  of  oscillation  between  the  tendencies  which 
pertained  to  the  monastic  life  and  those  which  yet  reached  out  to  the 
more  varied  world  outside,  the  saint  found  her  energies  so  scattered  that 
she  gave  up  for  a  time  the  attempt  to  unify  her  interior  life;  that  is,  she 
gave  up  the  practice  of  mental  prayer.  But  on  occasion  of  the  death 
of  her  father  three  years  later  she  placed  herself  under  the  direction  of 
her  father's  confessor.  This  director  charged  her  to  resume  her  prayer 
and  never  to  omit  it.  This  was  the  beginning  of  a  keener  struggle,  for  the 
influences  from  outside  militated  against  the  concentration  necessary  for 
the  practice.  The  saint's  own  language  runs  as  follows:  "I  suffered 
much  in  prayer;  for  the  spirit  was  slave,  and  not  master;  and  so  I  was 
not  able  to  shut  myself  up  within  myself — that  was  my  whole  method  of 
prayer — without  shutting  up  with  me  a  thousand  vanities  at  the  same 
time.  I  spent  many  years  in  this  way;  and  I  am  now  astonished  that 
any  one  could  have  borne  it  without  abandoning  either  the  one  or  the 
other. "^^  The  duplicity  of  the  situation  robbed  both  interests  of  their 
satisfaction  for  the  saint.  "It  was  the  most  painful  life  that  can  be 
imagined,  because  I  had  no  sweetness  in  God,  and  no  pleasure  in  the 
world.  When  I  was  in  the  midst  of  the  pleasures  of  the  world,  the 
remembrance  of  what  I  owed  to  God  made  me  sad:  and  when  I  was 
praying  to  God,  my  worldly  affections  disturbed  me.  This  is  so  painful 
a  struggle,  that  I  know  not  how  I  could  have  borne  it  for  a  month,  let 
alone  so  many  years."^^  Owing  to  the  failure  of  her  confessors  to  under- 
stand that  the  inner  Ufe  was  being  held  asunder  by  things  which,  although 
intrinsically  of  a  trivial  character,  could  nevertheless  in  a  delicate,  sensi- 
tive nature  such  as  hers  work  no  inconsiderable  havoc,  this  "divided 
self"  continued  its  unsatisfactory  existence  for  eleven  years  after  her 
resumption  of  mental  prayer.  For  she  was  not  bidden  to  give  up  her 
secular  companionships,  and  although  she  felt  that  they  were  wrong  for 
her,  her  feehngs  and  judgments  against  them  did  but  slowly  accumulate 
enough  dynamic  power  to  enable  her  to  forsake  them  herself.  However, 
her  conventual  attitude  gradually  gained  the  ascendency  over  her  worldly 

"  Life,  Chap.  VII,  12. 

»  Life,  Chap.  VII,  28. 

"  Life,  Chap.  VIII,  1-2. 


46  A  PSYCHOLOGICAL  INTERPRETATION  OF  MYSTICISM 

interest  as  the  years  passed  by  and  finally  her  problem  was  solved  by  the 
occurrence  of  her  first  ecstasy.  She  fell  into  a  trance  in  which  she  heard 
the  words,  "I  will  not  have  thee  converse  with  men  but  with  angels." 
From  that  day,  about  twenty  years  after  her  entrance  into  the  monas- 
tery, St.  Teresa  was  free  from  the  affections  of  the  world.  "God  be 
blessed  forever,"  she  exclaims  in  the  autobiography,  "who  in  one  mo- 
ment set  me  free,  while  I  had  been  for  many  years  making  many  efiforts, 
and  had  never  succeeded,  very  often  also  doing  such  violence  to  myself 
as  injured  my  health;  but,  as  it  was  done  by  Him  who  is  almighty,  and 
the  true  Lord  of  all,  it  gave  me  no  pain  whatever. "^^  Another  and  a  new 
life  seemed  to  da\vn,  in  which  although  there  were  troubles  enough,  due 
to  fear  lest  the  many  unusual  psychic  experiences  which  marked  it  were 
the  work  of  diabolical  influences,  as  her  confessors  said  they  were,  there 
was  yet  no  more  of  her  old  duaUty.    Her  life  had  at  last  become  one. 

Looking  now  at  this  development  in  more  psychological  terms  we 
see  that  the  center  about  which  St.  Teresa  tended  to  organize  all  the 
tendencies  of  her  life  was  the  idea  of  God.  She  sought  to  bring  all  her 
instincts  and  sentiments  into  relation  with  this  one  idea.  Her  early 
childish  curiosity  was  directed  upon  religious  themes.  Speaking  of  her 
reading  the  Lives  of  the  Saints  with  her  brother  she  says,  "  It  astonished 
us  greatly  to  find  it  said  in  what  we  were  reading  that  pain  and  bliss 
were  everlasting.  We  happened  very  often  to  talk  of  this;  and  we  had 
pleasure  in  repeating  frequently.  Tor  ever,  ever,  ever.' "  Her  fear  seems 
almost  never  to  have  been  aroused  except  in  regard  to  the  question  of 
her  relation  to  God;  in  her  younger  days  it  was  fear  lest  sin  might  keep 
her  away  from  God  and  in  later  life  it  was  fear  lest  she  were  doing  injus- 
tice to  God  through  yielding  to  what  might  be  the  wiles  of  Satan.  The 
thought  of  God  called  forth  an  attitude  of  the  profoundest  self-abase- 
ment; while  the  conviction  that  she  was  serving  Him,  especially  in  the 
later  years  when  she  was  founding  religious  houses,  gave  her  the  power 
of  a  most  vigorous  self-assertion  toward  opposing  difficulties.  Her 
pugnacity  seems  never  to  have  revealed  itself  except  against  those  forms 
of  religious  laxity  which  she  felt  to  be  hindrances  to  the  soul's  attainment 
of  the  vision  of  God.  And  if,  following  McDougall,  we  call  sympathetic 
interest  in  the  welfare  of  others  a  manifestation  of  the  parental  instinct, 
we  find  this  instinct  too  expressed  as  a  desire  that  those  with  whom  she 
came  in  contact  should  also  be  aided  in  their  relation  to  God.  The 
never-failing  gregarious  instinct  appears  in  her  great  delight  in  the  pres- 
"  Life,  XXIV,  9. 


THE  CASE  OF  ST.  TERESA  47 

ence  of  other  devout  individuals.  Acquisitiveness  manifests  itself  in  the 
accumulation  of  experiences  of  especial  nearness  to  God.  And  construc- 
tion, lastly,  was  all  in  the  service  of  God,  both  in  the  childhood  days  of 
building  hermitages  in  the  orchard,  and  in  the  mature  years  of  founding 
monasteries. 

It  is  significant  for  our  purpose  to  point  out  that  in  this  idea  which 
was  the  organizing  center  for  her  tendencies  was  included  her  conception 
of  Christ.  God  and  Christ  are  used  almost  interchangeably  by  her. 
A  little  further  on  we  shall  give  some  quotations  to  show  that  one  of  her 
devotional  practices  was  the  attempt  to  picture  as  clearly  as  possible  to 
herself  the  human  figure  of  Christ.  This  decidedly  human  aspect  of  her 
conception  was  a  profound  aid  in  her  eventual  attachment  of  all  her  love 
along  with  her  other  tendencies  to  this  one  idea.  For  we  must  recognize 
the  fact  that  so  absolute  a  unification  of  the  personality  as  St.  Teresa 
sought  involved  the  control  of  the  sex  impulse  as  well  as  the  others. 

For,  even  with  St.  Teresa  as  with  many  another  saint  the  most 
refractory  impulse  to  implicate  with  the  rest  in  unifying  her  life  about 
her  highest  ideal  was  the  sex  impulse.  Although  she  deplores  her  vanity 
and  the  desire  to  be  well  thought  of  in  regard  to  religious  matters  during 
her  earlier  years  in  the  Monastery  of  the  Incarnation,  these  tendencies 
seem  never  to  have  given  her  the  trouble  that  the  sexual  tendency  did. 
This  may  seem  astonishing  at  first  in  view  of  the  fact  that  the  autobi- 
ography nowhere  speaks  of  those  battles  with  the  flesh  which  other 
saints  such  as  St.  Francis  and  St.  John  of  the  Cross  describe.  But  this 
fact  is  evidence  not  that  the  instinct  was  inoperative,  but  that  it  was 
working  in  ways  which  obscured  its  immediate  character.  For  "this 
instinct,  more  than  any  other,  is  apt  in  mankind  to  lend  the  immense 
energy  of  its  impulse  to  the  sentiments  and  complex  impulses  into  which 
it  enters,  while  its  specific  character  remains  submerged  and  uncon- 
scious. "^^  In  a  woman  of  St.  Teresa's  fine  sensitivity  we  can  well  imagine 
that  the  instinct  would  not  come  to  the  surface  in  its  own  crudity,  but 
rather  fused  and  interpenetrated  with  some  sentiment.  And,  indeed, 
such  seemed  to  be  precisely  what  happened.  Shut  away  from  the  world 
of  ordinary  attachments  the  deep  instinct  to  love  insinuated  itself  into 
those  friendships  of  Teresa  with  persons  who  visited  her  from  the  city. 
This  seems  to  be  the  true  explanation  of  the  agitation  and  disintegration 
within  her  inner  life  occasioned  by  the  conversations  with  her  friends 
from  the  world.  It  was  not  that  the  conversations  were  frivolous,  but 
18  McDougall,  Social  Psychology,  p.  82. 


48  A  PSYCHOLOGICAL  INTERPRETATION  OF  MYSTICISM 

that  the  presence  of  those  friends  divided  the  affections  of  the  saint 
between  earthly  persons  and  the  central  conception  about  which  she  was 
striving  to  organize  her  whole  set  of  instincts.  As  a  newcomer  in  the 
monastery,  the  young  woman  had  not  yet  learned  how  to  direct  her  whole 
affection  upon  God:  consequently  it  flowed  out  through  those  distract- 
ing channels.  During  those  twenty  years  of  struggle  which  followed 
she  gradually  learned  how  to  guide  it  through  prayer  and  meditation  on 
the  Sacred  Humanity  of  Christ.  But  the  continual  visits  of  her  friends 
retarded  the  process.  Had  it  not  been  for  them  she  doubtless  would 
have  chieved  her  unification  much  sooner.  That  she  was  really  dealing 
with  the  sex  instinct  in  one  of  its  secondary  manifestations  of  affectionate 
friendship,  St.  Teresa  did  not  understand,  though  she  often  felt  that  these 
friendships  were  somehow  hindrances  to  her  main  purpose.  There  are 
only  two  passages  which  vaguely  suggest  that  she  accounted  such  ties 
in  later  life  as  belonging  to  the  interests  of  the  "flesh."  Exclaiming 
against  the  dangers  to  young  nuns  in  uninclosed  monasteries  she  says, 
"  Many  of  them  (the  nuns)  are  to  be  pitied ;  for  they  wished  to  withdraw 
from  the  world,  and,  thinking  to  escape  from  the  dangers  of  it,  and  that 
they  are  going  to  serve  our  Lord,  have  found  themselves  in  ten  worlds 
at  once,  without  knowing  what  to  do,  or  how  to  help  themselves.  Youth 
and  sensuahty  and  the  devil  invite  them  and  incline  them  to  follow  cer- 
tain ways  which  are  of  the  essence  of  worldliness."^^  Again  she  says  that 
in  such  lax  institutions  the  sincere  friar  or  nun  "must  be  more  cautious, 
and  dissemble  more,  when  they  would  speak  of  that  friendship  with 
God  which  they  desire  to  have,  than  they  would  when  they  would 
speak  of  those  friendships  and  affections  which  the  devil  arranges  in 
monasteries.^"  In  other  places  she  speaks  of  these  conversations 
as  belonging  to  the  pleasures  of  sense.  These  indirect  references 
show  that  St.  Teresa  although  by  no  means  clearly  aware  of  the  fun- 
damental origin  of  her  inner  troubles  yet  felt  that  these  relationships, 
based  on  instinctive  personal  liking,  were  inferior  in  quality  to 
those  which  were  rooted  in  a  mutual  love  of  God.  It  is  interesting 
to  note  that  her  friendships  after  the  crisis  which  solved  her  prob- 
lem of  unification,  were  all  of  the  latter  sort.  Whenever  she 
speaks  of  later  affections  she  explains  that  they  are  due  to  the  piety 
and  love  of  God  which  she  perceived  in  the  persons  who  inspired  them. 

"  Life,  Chap.  VII,  2. 
"Z,i/e,  Chap.  VII,9. 


THE  CASE  OF  ST.  TERESA  49 

But  one  of  the  most  striking  indications  that  St.  Teresa's  struggle  for 
unification  was  at  bottom  the  attempt  to  enlist  the  sex  impulse  in  the 
organization  with  the  other  tendencies  about  her  central  interest  is  the 
fact  that  ecstasies,  raptures,  interior  comforts,  etc.,  begin  to  multiply 
after  her  definite  break  with  the  ties  that  so  long  bound  her  to  the  love 
of  particular  persons.  The  great  instinct  once  integrated  with  the  rest 
in  the  service  of  her  religious  interest  wrought  all  its  emotional  effects 
in  her  religious  life.  Professor  Leuba  has  pointed  out  the  sexual  aspect 
of  these  enhanced  mystic  states.  Their  great  emotional  intensity,  he 
thinks,  is  the  outcome  of  the  deeply  rooted  tendency  of  the  organism  to 
organic  enjoyment,  which,  denied  its  ordinary  expression,  manifests 
itself  in  the  experience  of  the  mystic  who  is  striving  intensely  for  a  com- 
plete devotion  to  God  as  an  "erotomania  with  the  idea  of  Jesus,  the 
Virgin  Mary  or  God  as  respondent."  The  profound  affective  experience 
of  the  mystic  always  involves,  on  this  view,  the  excitation  of  "at  least 
some  of  the  organs  of  the  sexual  life,  to  an  extent  varying  with  each  per- 
son, and  always  without  his  knowledge."  The  fact  then  that  these 
extreme  states  did  not  set  in  for  St.  Teresa  until  after  her  sense  of  uni- 
fication became  established  seems  to  suggest  that  the  heart  of  her  prob- 
lem was  really  the  subjugation  of  the  wayward  sex  impulse  to  her  ulti- 
mate aim.  With  the  other  instincts  she  had  very  little  trouble  in  com- 
parison with  this  one.  This  impulse  was  by  far  the  most  difficult  to 
direct  and  undoubtedly  because  it  did  not  manifest  itself  in  its  own 
specific  form. 

In  this  interpretation  of  St.  Teresa's  problem  we  are  by  no  means 
intending  to  discount  the  pure  and  lofty  aspirations  of  the  saint.  The 
sex  instinct  plays  a  profound  and  important  role  in  a  wide  range  of  human 
reactions  and  when,  in  psychological  analysis,  we  indicate  its  presence 
in  unexpected  phases  we  are  far  from  unplying  that  these  phases  are 
thereby  debased.  To  do  so  would  be  to  depreciate  some  of  the  finest 
values  we  know.  For,  as  Professor  Ames  remarks,  "The  same  impulse 
which  impels  to  the  union  of  individuals  in  courtship  is  carried  over  into 
the  comradeship  and  brotherhood  of  families,  clans,  nations  and  races."^^ 
Leuba  himself,  who  uses  so  strong  a  word  as  "erotomania"  in  connection 
with  the  mystics,  is  careful  to  insist  that  this  need  by  no  means  lessen 
our  respect  for  them.  "Erotomania,"  he  says,"  we  need  not  shrink  from 
using  the  term — is  here  in  the  service  of  lofty,  ideal  ends.  As  the  enjoy- 
ment does  not  come  from  practices  guilty  in  their  eyes,  but,  on  the  con- 
trary, from  the  vivid  realization  of  the  surpassingly  great  love  to  them 
*'  Psychology  of  Religious  Experience,  p.  235. 


50  A  PSYCHOLOGICAL  INTERPRETATION  OF  MYSTICISM 

of  an  absolutely  good  God,  its  effect  is  elevating  rather  than  debasing: 
it  becomes  the  strengthener  of  holy  resolves;  it  cements  together  the 
tendencies  according  to  the  will  of  God  and  increases  their  power.  Allow 
me  to  recall  in  this  connection  the  opinion  held  by  many  among  those 
who  have  paid  serious  attention  to  the  relation  of  the  sexual  function 
to  the  psychic  life,  that  the  irradiation  of  sexual  energy  when  deviated 
from  its  ordinary  channels  of  discharge  accounts  for  much  of  the  growth 
of  the  higher  mental  life."^^  As  a  matter  of  fact  it  was  the  very  purity 
of  St.  Teresa's  aspirations  which  made  the  solution  of  her  problem  an 
unwitting  mastery,  in  behalf  of  her  highest  ideal,  of  an  impulse  whose 
real  nature  she  did  not  recognize.  Paradoxical  as  it  may  seem  we  have 
here  an  unconscious  resolution  of  an  unconscious  problem. 

When  we  ask  why  St.  Teresa's  problem  should  have  taken  the  form 
it  did  we  come  to  the  third  factor  at  work  in  the  development  of  her 
mysticism.  In  the  modern  thought  environment  where  the  emphasis 
is  laid  upon  a  divinity  in  our  ordinary  life  and  not  beyond  it,  where  our 
highest  values  are  found  within  the  world  of  human  relationships  rather 
than  in  some  superhuman  realm,  the  need  is  not  felt  to  abstract  our 
tendencies  from  their  normal  functioning  in  the  give  and  take  of  normal 
human  experience  in  order  to  apply  them  to  a  world  of  supra-mundane 
experience.  In  St.  Teresa's  time  things  were  different.  We  have  seen 
how  early  she  was  introduced  to  the  Medieval  ideals  of  accounting  this 
world  as  naught  and  of  striving  for  the  vision  of  God  as  something  apart 
from  it.  Her  earliest  recollections  are  of  the  prayers  which  her  mother 
taught  her — all  with  their  Medieval  sentiment,  we  may  be  sure — of 
reading  eagerly  the  Lives  of  the  Saints,  and  of  imitating  the  religious  life 
in  childish  games.  Her  father  surrounded  his  children  with  "good 
books"  which  helped  her  to  "think  seriously"  when  she  was  six  or  seven 
years  old.  As  a  girl  in  the  Augustinian  monastery  she  learned  of  giving 
up  all  things  for  God.  While  convalescing  from  the  illness  which  took 
her  from  that  place  she  visited  an  uncle  who  "in  his  old  age  had  left 

all  his  possessions  and  become  a  religious His  practice  was 

to  read  good  books  in  Spanish;  and  his  ordinary  conversation  was  about 
God  and  the  vanity  of  the  world.  These  books  he  made  me  read  to 
him By  the  good  conversation  of  my  uncle  I  came  to  under- 
stand the  truth  I  had  heard  in  my  childhood,  that  all  things  are  as  noth- 

22  For  Leuba's  theory  see  his  article  on  "The  Psychology  of  a  Group  of  Christian 
Mystics,"  from  which  the  above  quotations  are  taken,  in  Mind,  1905,  New  Series, 
Vol.  14,  p.  18;  also  two  articles  in  the  Revue  Philosophique,  Juillet,  1902. 


THE  CASE  OF  ST.  TERESA  51 

ing,  the  world  vanity,  and  passing  rapidly  away."^^  Later,  when  she 
had  become  a  real  nun  in  the  Monastery  of  the  Incarnation  these  impres- 
sions were  deepened.  In  the  days  of  her  noviciate  she  began  to  read  a 
book  on  the  prayer  of  recollection.  This  set  her  in  the  way  of  truly 
mystical  practices.     "  I  was  much  pleased  with  the  book  and  resolved  to 

follow  the  way  of  prayer  it  described  with  all  my  might I 

began  to  spend  a  certain  time  in  solitude,  to  go  frequently  to  confession, 
and  make  a  beginning  of  that  way  of  prayer,  with  this  book  for  my 
guide I  spent  nearly  nine  months  in  the  practice  of  soli- 
tude."-^ In  these  beginnings  of  St.  Teresa's  religious  life  we  see  the 
illustration  of  the  fact  which  we  mentioned  in  Chapter  I,  namely,  that 
the  mystic  of  the  later  Middle  Ages  gained  suggestions  both  of  the  ulti- 
mate value  to  be  striven  for,  and  of  the  means  of  attaining  it,  from  their 
social  environment.  The  sensitive  spirit  of  St.  Teresa  came  early  into  the 
heritage  of  the  mystic  goal  as  well  as  of  the  mystic  technique.  The 
book  on  prayer  which  she  followed  was  the  "Tercer  Abecedario,"  the 
work  of  one  Fray  Francisco  de  Osuna  of  the  Order  of  St.  Francis.  The 
Franciscan  Order  was  deeply  imbued  with  the  tradition  of  shunning  the 
claims  of  the  world  and  striving  for  a  unique  experience  of  God  in  the 
advanced  stages  of  the  prayer  state,  a§  one  may  see  by  reading  the 
Little  Flowers  of  St.  Francis.  "'*•-.. 

The  effect  of  acting  upon  these  ehviroimiental  suggestions  was  to 
develop  in  St.  Teresa  a  wide  range  of  subconscious  activity.  Whether  her 
keen  sensitivity  would  have  resulted  in  visions,  locutions  and  other  auto- 
matisms in  reaction  to  a  modern  twentieth  century  environment  we  can- 
not say.  But  certainly  her  intense  striving  for  the  Vision  of  God — and 
this  meant  for  her  not  necessarily  a  visual  apprehension,  but  the  closest 
and  most  complete  immediate  contact — was  a  type  of  procedure  which, 
particularly  in  days  when  miratulous  revelations  were  commonly  believed 
in  and  sought  for,  was  well  adapted  to  excite  subconscious  activity.  She 
strove  to  "recollect"  herself  through  mental  prayer  in  quiet,  and  prac- 
ticed in  prayer  "the  presence  of  Christ."  The  prayer  of  recollection 
involved  those  factors  of  narrowing  of  the  field  of  consciousness,  limi- 
tation of  voluntary  movement,  exclusion  of  irrelevant  mental  material, 
etc.,  which  lay  the  individual  open  to  the  manifestations  of  subconscious 
activity  by  bringing  on  an  abnormal  mental  state.  William  James  has 
indicated  in  his  Varieties  of  Religions  Experience  that  prayer  is  an  act 

^  Life,  Chap.  Ill,  5-6. 

2"  Ibid.,  Chap.  IV,  8-9. 


52  A  PSYCHOLOGICAL  INTERPRETATION  OF  MYSTICISM 

whereby  the  individual  makes  some  kind  of  a  draught  upon  his  subcon- 
scious resources.  We  need  not  here  go  into  the  various  theories  and 
analyses  of  the  contents  of  the  subconscious.  It  is  enough  for  our  purpose 
to  understand  by  it  "any  conserved  experience  or  process  outside  of 
consciousness,"  to  borrow  a  phrase  from  Morton  Prince.^  In  the  well- 
known  description  of  James  it  is  "the  abode  of  everything  that  is  latent 
and  the  reservoir  of  everything  that  passes  unrecorded  or  unobserved. 
It  contains,  for  example,  such  things  as  all  our  momentarily  inactive 
memories,  and  it  harbors  the  springs  of  all  our  obscurely  motived  pas- 
sions, impulses,  likes,  dislikes  and  prejudices.  Our  intuitions,  hypo- 
theses, fancies,  superstitions,  persuasions,  convictions,  and  in  general  all 
our  nonrational  operations  come  from  it.  It  is  the  source  of  our  dreams, 
and  apparently  they  may  return  into  it.  In  it  may  arise  what- 
ever mystical  experiences  we  may  have,  and  our  automatisms,  sensory 
or  motor:  our  life  in  hypnotic  and  "hypnoid"  conditions,  if  we  are  sub- 
ject to  such  conditions;  our  delusions,  fixed  ideas,  and  hysterical  acci- 
dents, if  we  are  hysteric  subjects;  our  supra-normal  cognitions  if  such  there 
be,  and  if  we  are  telepathic  subjects."^^  Students  of  Abnormal  Psy- 
chology are  well  aware  of  the  fact  that  the  human  organism  is  much  more 
sensitive  to  the  environment  and  apprehensive  of  a  far  greater  range  of 
minutia  and  detail  than  our  merely  conscious  experiences  would  lead  us 
to  believe.  This  has  been  demonstrated  time  out  of  mind  by  the  re- 
covery in  hypnosis  of  precise  details  of  experiences  of  which  the  subject's 
normal  consciousness  retained  only  the  vaguest  impression  or  perhaps  no 
impression  at  all.  This  being  so,  we  see  that  among  the  subconscious 
contents  is  an  enormous  number  of  quite  precise  impressions  received 
from  the  environment  which  are  ordinarily  not  available  to  the  main 
consciousness  because  they  were  received  surreptitiously,  so  to  speak, 
when  the  attention  was  directed  elsewhere. 

But  these  subconscious  contents  may  become  available  under  con- 
ditions of  deep  abstraction  and  limitation  of  the  field  of  clear  con- 
sciousness to  the  smallest  possible  scope.  Such  concentration  we  find  in 
the  hysterical,  the  hypnotic  subject,  and  the  mystic.  It  occurs  spon- 
taneously in  the  hysterical,  because,  as  Janet  has  labored  to  prove,  there 
is  in  this  case  a  pathological  weakness  of  the  power  to  attend  to  a  wide 
range  of  stimuli  at  once."    It  is  brought  about  in  the  hypnotic  subject 

^  The  Unconscious,  p.  252. 
^  Varieties  of  Religious  Experience,  p.  483. 

"  See  Janet,  Pierre,  "The  Major  Symptoms  of  Hysteria"  and  "The  Mental  State 
of  Hystericals." 


THE  CASE  OF  ST.  TERESA  /  53 

by  his  efifort  to  concentrate  under  the  direction  and  with  the  aid  of  the 
suggestions  of  his  physician.  It  is  produced  in  the  mystic  by  himself 
in  the  prolonged  practice  of  recollecting  himself  in  prayer,  as  we  have 
indicated  in  our  first  chapter. 

A  characteristic  of  the  subconscious  contents  is  their  power  to  change 
and  combine  into  novel  forms.  Especially  is  this  evident  in  dreams. 
Sometimes  the  combinations  seem  to  be  haphazard  without  guiding 
principle.  Sometimes  when  the  main  consciousness  is  disturbed  or 
worried  over  some  specific  matter  or  under  the  domination  of  some  strong 
desire  the  combination  is  with  reference  to  that  particular  thing.  Thus 
in  dreams  we  are  not  infrequently  impressed  with  a  certain  relevancy 
between  the  dream  imagery  and  our  waking  concerns.  An  especially 
interesting  instance  of  the  ministrations  of  the  subconscious  processes  to 
the  conscious  self  is  given  in  the  famous  case  of  Miss  Beauchamp  by 
Morton  Prince.     Miss  Beauchamp  was  a  profound  hysterical. 

"Miss  B.  as  a  child  frequently  had  visions  of  the  Madonna  and 
Christ,  and  used  to  believe  that  she  had  actually  seen  them.  It  was 
her  custom  when  in  trouble,  if  it  was  only  a  matter  of  her  school  lessons, 
or  something  that  she  had  lost,  to  resort  to  prayer.  Then  she  would  be 
apt  to  have  a  vision  of  Christ.  The  vision  never  spoke,  but  sometimes 
made  signs  to  her,  and  the  expression  of  his  face  made  her  feel  that  all 
was  well.  After  the  vision  passed  she  felt  that  her  difficulties  were 
removed,  and  if  it  was  a  bothersome  lesson  which  she  had  been  unable  to 
understand,  it  all  became  intelligible  at  once.     Or,  if  it  was  something 

that  she  had  lost,  she  at  once  went  to  the  spot  where  it  was" 

"Miss  B.  had  lost  a  bank  check  and  was  much  troubled  concerning  it. 
For  five  days  she  had  made  an  unsuccessful  hunt  for  it,  systematically 
going  through  everything  in  her  room.  She  remembered  distinctly 
placing  the  check  between  the  leaves  of  a  book,  when  some  one  knocked 
at  the  door  and  this  was  the  last  she  sav/  of  the  check.  She  had  become 
very  much  troubled  about  the  matter,  and  in  consequence,  after  going 
to  bed  that  night  she  was  unable  to  sleep,  and  rose  several  times  to 
make  a  further  hunt.  Finally  at  three  o'clock  in  the  morning, 
she  went  to  bed  and  fell  asleep.  At  four  o'clock  she  woke 
with  the  consciousness  of  a  presence  in  the  room.  She  arose  and  in  a 
moment  saw  a  vision  of  Christ,  which  did  not  speak,  but  smiled.  She  at 
once  felt,  as  she  used  to,  that  everything  was  well,  and  that  the  vision 
foretold  that  she  would  find  the  check.  All  her  anxiety  left  her  at  once. 
The  figure  retreated  toward  the  bureau,  but  the  thought  flashed  into 


54         A  PSYCHOLOGICAL  INTERPRETATION  OF  MYSTICISM 

her  mind  that  the  lost  check  was  in  the  drawer  of  her  desk.  A  search, 
however,  showed  that  it  was  not  there.  She  then  walked  automatically 
to  the  bureau,  opened  the  top  drawer,  took  out  some  stuff  on  which  she 
had  been  sewing,  unfolded  it,  and  there  was  the  check  along  with  one  or 
two  other  papers. "^^ 

In  this  description  of  Miss  B's  hunt  for  her  money  we  have  an  illus- 
tration of  the  way  in  which  an  anxious  desire  can  set  subconscious 
processes  going  in  a  way  that  has  pertinence  to  our  troubled  situation. 
As  the  case  of  Miss  B.  is  that  of  an  hysterical  we  have  here  the  more 
elaborate  working  of  the  subconscious  processes  into  a  vision  and  auto- 
matic acts.  But  the  significant  fact  is  that  the  absent-minded  act  of 
Miss  B.  in  putting  the  money  where  she  did  made  its  definite  impression 
on  some  part  of  her  organism,  and  when  summoned  in  response  to  her 
need  and  her  special  effort  in  prayer,  somehow  connected  itself  with  the 
idea  of  Christ  as  the  symbol  of  well-being  and  arose  in  her  main  conscious- 
ness to  give  symbolic  direction  to  her  search. 

Now  in  view  of  the  foregoing  we  have  a  psychological  angle  from 
which  to  interpret  the  hallucinatory  experiences  of  St.  Teresa.  She 
was  surrounded  from  childhood  with  religious  objects.  They  filled  her 
life.  She  was  a  constant  reader  of  religious  books.  In  her  noviciate  she 
liked  to  be  surrounded  with  images  and  to  look  at  pictures.  She  sought 
to  imagine  the  humanity  of  Christ  early  in  her  practice  of  prayer.  Nat- 
urally after  she  achieved  her  goal  of  unity  of  self,  so  that  she  was  able 
to  enter  into  the  deepest  concentration  in  prayer  it  is  quite  to  be  expected 
that  the  subconscious  contents,  stored  up  through  years  of  impressions 
from  religious  things  received  both  consciously  and  through  the  countless 
channels  that  feed  the  subconscious,  should  emerge  into  that  main  con- 
sciousness both  as  objects  of  contemplation  and,  in  times  of  stress,  to 
furnish  what  aid  their  more  minute  acquaintance  with  things  afforded. 
Through  all  those  twenty  years  of  struggle  before  the  saint  had  subdued 
the  distractions  of  personal  affection  she  had  been  practicing  recollection 
and  concentration,  striving,  unconsciously  indeed,  to  create  the  very 
conditions  most  favorable  to  the  dumping  of  subconscious  results  into 
the  main  consciousness.  It  is  not  surprising,  therefore,  that  visions  of 
Christ,  the  Virgin  Mary,  the  Devil  and  Saints,  Heaven  and  Hell  came 
trooping  in  with  great  facility  when  once  she  had  mastered  the  technique 
of  concentration.  For  these  ideas  had  made  up  her  world  of  values 
since  the  days  of  her  childhood. 

2*  Prince,  Morton,  The  Dissociation  of  a  Personalily.  Appendix  L,  p.  548.  Also 
quoted  in  The  Unsconscious,  pp.  188-89. 


THE  CASE  OF  ST.  TERESA  55 

We  see  evidences  of  the  subconscious  maturing  of  tendencies  in  the 
experience  which  we  have  already  noted  of  her  hearing  the  words,  "I 
will  not  have  thee  converse  with  men,  but  with  angels."  For  the  years 
preceding  tliis  revelation,  which  marked  the  sundering  of  the  earthly 
friendships,  had  been  filled  with  the  increasing  desire  on  the  part  of  the 
saint  to  devote  her  all  to  God.  This  yearning,  started  in  her  main  con- 
sciousness, matured  gradually  in  the  subconscious  region,  until  ripe 
enough  to  conquer  the  divided  condition  of  her  inner  life,  when  it  sent 
in  its  report  to  the  main  consciousness  in  the  form  of  a  divine  command. 
Similarly  her  vision  of  Christ  which  continued  before  her  for  several  days 
is  another  example  of  the  same  thing.  For  years  she  had  striven  to 
picture  to  herself  the  Sacred  Humanity.  Even  in  her  earliest  nunhood 
she  began  this  effort.  "I  used  to  labor  with  all  my  might  to  imagine 
Jesus  Christ,  our  God  and  our  Lord,  present  within  me.  And  this  was 
the  way  I  prayed. "^^  Only  for  a  time  when  influenced  by  the  opinions 
of  certain  books  did  the  saint  give  up  this  practice.  But  she  hastens  to 
tell  us,  "I  did  not  continue  long  of  this  opinion,  and  so  I  returned  to  my 
habit  of  delighting  in  the  Lord,  particularly  at  Communion.  I  wish  I 
could  have  his  picture  and  image  always  before  my  eyes,  since  I  cannot 
have  Him  graven  in  my  soul  as  deeply  as  I  wish."^"  An  interesting 
aspect  of  this  effort  of  Teresa's  is  that  she  did  not  succeed  very  well 
because  her  imagination  was  "sluggish,"  as  she  calls  it.  But  this  slug- 
gishness was  more  than  made  up  by  the  subconscious  elaboration  following 
the  effort.  For  when  her  period  of  visions  arrived,  that  of  the  Sacred 
Humanity  surpassed  anything  that  she  had  been  able  to  dream  of  or  see 
painted.  It  clearly  had  had  a  longer  and  more  persistent  subconscious 
incubation  than  any  of  her  other  impressions.  Incidentally  we  perceive 
in  the  above  quotation  the  method  by  which  St.  Teresa  managed  to  direct 
her  affection  upon  the  divine  Object  by  means  of  the  imaging  of  Christ. 
After  the  control  of  the  sex  instinct  was  accomplished  the  idea  so  long 
striven  for  was  translated  into  a  \dsion. 

It  is  not  possible  to  analyse  all  of  her  automatisms  in  detail  because 
the  entire  setting  is  but  rarely  given.  But  instances  are  not  lacking  in 
which  we  see  subconscious  responses  to  problems  or  suggestions  arising 
in  the  main  consciousness.  The  vision  directing  her  to  found  the  Mon- 
astery of  St.  Joseph  is  of  this  type.  It  was  after  she  had  discussed  the 
possibility  of  founding  a  house  of  stricter  conventual  discipUne,  but  was 
yet  holding  back  because  of  liking  for  the  condition  in  which  she  then  was> 

"  Life,  Chap.  IV,  10. 


56  A  PSYCHOLOGICAL  INTERPRETATION  OF  MYSTICISM 

that  the  suggestion  worked  itself  out  into  the  command  to  work  for  that 
end  with  her  whole  might.  Sometimes  questions  were  answered  as  in 
the  following:  "Once  when  I  was  thinking  how  much  more  purely  they 
live  who  withdraw  themselves  from  all  business,  and  how  ill  it  goes  with 
me,  and  how  many  faults  I  must  be  guilty  of  when  I  have  business  to 
transact,  I  heard  this;  'It  cannot  be  otherwise.  My  daughter;  but  strive 
thou  always  after  a  good  intention  in  all  things,  and  detachment;  lift 
up  thine  eyes  to  Me,  and  see  that  all  thine  actions  may  resemble  Mine.'  "^^ 
Again  we  have  instances  of  subconscious  reproach  and  commendation 
when  the  Lord  chided  her  for  short-comings  or  praised  her  for  some  par- 
ticular service. 

To  St.  Teresa  herself  these  various  revelations  seemed  to  have  a 
foreign  origination.  Although  she  was  well  aware  that  they  really  were 
not  outside  herself  she  yet  had  the  firm  conviction  that  they  did  not  arise 
from  herself.  The  utterances  were  too  profound  and  the  scenes  too 
inconceivably  great  in  her  estimation  to  arise  from  her  own  intelligence. 
"The  human  locution,"  she  says — and  she  seems  to  mean  here  chance 
words  arising  in  the  midst  of  mystical  devotions  which  are  akin  to  the 
verbal  hypnogogic  hallucinations  of  normal  sleep  experience — -"is  as 
something  which  we  cannot  well  make  out,  as  if  we  were  half  asleep;  but 
the  divine  locution  is  a  voice  so  clear  that  not  a  syllable  of  its  utterance  is 
lost.  It  may  occur,  too,  when  the  understanding  and  the  soul  are  so 
troubled  and  distracted  that  they  cannot  form  one  sentence  correctly; 
and  yet  grand  sentences,  perfectly  arranged,  such  as  the  soul  in  its  most 

recollected  state  never  could  have  formed,  are  uttered The 

divine  locutions  instruct  us  without  loss  of  time,  and  we  understand 
matters  which  seem  to  require  a  month  on  our  part  to  arrange.  The 
understanding,  and  the  soul,  stand  amazed  at  some  of  the  things  we 
understand. "^^  The  inspiring  power  of  these  "grand  sentences"  she 
takes  as  further  evidence  of  their  derivation  from  a  source  beyond  her- 
self. Again  she  points  to  the  fact  that  these  visitations  both  of  locu- 
tions and  visions  come  at  incalculable  times  and  not  as  the  result  of  her 
own  volition.  In  other  words  they  are  entirely  automatic.  To  the 
modern  psychologist,  such  experiences  suggest  not  necessarily  a  super- 
natural power  but  the  workings  of  an  unusually  rich  and  busy  subcon- 
sciousness. The  mystic  is  right  in  feeling  that  the  voices  and  visions 
are  not  the  expression  of  his  immediate  waking  consciousness,  but  they 
are  none  the  less  the  outcome  of  that  part  of  his  own  mental  makeup 
'*  Relation  III,  sec.  4. 
'2  Life,  Chap.  XXV,  sees.  6  and  12. 


THE  CASE  OF  ST.  TERESA  57 

which  we  call  the  subconscious.  In  the  sensitive  temperament  of  the 
mystic  the  profound  energizing  in  devotional  practice  sets  going  a  con- 
siderable ferment  in  the  fringe  of  his  mental  life,  an  organizing  of  ideas,  as 
in  the  artistic  consciousness  with  the  difference  that  the  ideas  are  chiefly- 
religious.  From  time  to  time  the  products  of  this  hidden,  organizing 
process  emerge  into  the  dominant  waking  consciousness  as  intruders, 
taking  the  form  of  extra-originated  words  and  visions.  The  voices  and 
visions  of  the  mystic  are  after  all  very  much  akin  to  the  inspirations  of 
the  artist.^^  They  represent  coordinations  for  which  he  has  striven  but 
which  are  completed  in  the  margin  of  his  mental  activity,  with  the  result 
that  they  are  not  recognized  as  products  of  the  focal  center  when  they 
appear  therein. 

Drawing  together  now  the  main  features  of  our  analysis  of  the  case 
of  St.  Teresa  we  see  that  her  mysticism  is  rooted  in  the  three  factors 
which  we  stated  in  the  beginning.  An  initial  sensitivity  which  was 
enhanced  by  much  bodily  illness  made  her  especially  impressionable  with 
reference  to  the  ideals  of  her  social  group,  which  means  really  the  whole 
Medieval  consciousness,  dominated  by  the  conceptions  of  a  transcendent 
Deity,  contact  with  whom  is  to  be  attained  by  turning  away  from  the 
world  of  ordinary  relations.  In  attempting  to  bring  her  Hfe  into  harmony 
with  the  conceptual  elements  of  her  environment  St.  Teresa  found  her 
chief  difficulty  with  the  sex  impulse.  Her  long  struggle  for  perfection  is 
really  an  expression  of  her  effort  to  master  this  instinct,  whose  character 
she  did  not  recognize,  in  the  interests  of  the  socially-conceived  highest 
ideal.  Her  profound  affective  experiences — raptures,  ecstasies,  etc. — 
are  the  outcome  of  her  final  victory  in  the.  struggle;  while  her  visions, 
locutions,  and  other  automatisms  are  the  products  of  the  subconscious 
maturing  of  the  strenuous  inner  striving  involved  in  the  conflict.  In  a 
word,  the  mysticism  of  St.  Teresa  is  the  outcome  of  a  highly  senstive 
nature  endeavoring  to  reconcile  the  confficting  claims  of  the  normal  human 
instincts  and  a  particularly  exacting  social  environment. 

^^  See  Chapter  I. 


CHAPTER  IV 
The  Mysticism  oi  Blaise  Pascal 

In  the  life  of  St.  Teresa  we  saw  a  mysticism  which  arose  in  an  envi- 
ronment distinctly  Medieval.  Although  the  modern  history  of  Spain  is 
said  to  date  from  the  accession  of  Charles  the  Fifth  in  1.516,  one  year 
after  the  birth  of  St.  Teresa,  this  by  no  means  signifies  that  the  six- 
teenth century  witnessed  a  decline  of  the  civilization  of  the  past.  The 
spirit  of  the  Inquisition  and  the  Counter-Reformation  upheld  too  power- 
fully the  sanctions  and  traditions  of  the  Church  to  allow  the  rapid 
entrance  of  such  influences  as  were  affecting  Italy,  Germany,  and  Swit- 
zerland. It  is  true  that  this  century  was  taught  of  Spain  in  the  exploits 
of  Columbus,  Vasco  da  Gama,  Magellan,  Cortez,  and  Pizarro,  but  the 
reflex  effects  of  such  events  had  not  yet  begun  to  make  themselves  power- 
fully felt  in  the  world  of  religious  thought;  still  less  in  the  seclusion  of 
monasteries  and  nunneries  where  St.  Teresa  moved.  Accordingly  there 
breathes  about  her  life  the  atmosphere  of  Medieval  devotion,  harking 
back  to  the  world-sacrificing  struggle  after  the  vision  of  God  through 
prayer  and  self-mortification  in  the  isolation  of  the  private  cell.  The 
influences  playing  upon  her  life  were  thus  uniform  rather  than  complex. 
The  organized  structure  of  Medieval  religious  culture  had  no  rival  in 
her  consciousness. 

But  turning  to  the  following  century  and  to  another  country  we  find 
a  more  complex  milieu  giving  rise  to  a  different  type  of  mystic.  France 
in  the  seventeenth  century,  though  still  well  acquainted  with  monastic 
ideals  and  practices  was  feeling  the  effects  of  a  new  stream  of  thought 
and  a  new  spirit.  The  Renaissance  with  all  that  it  implied  had  already 
by  1623,  when  Pascal  was  born,  ushered  in  the  mood  of  modern  science. 
The  work  of  Copernicus,  Tycho  Brahe  and  Kepler  had  marked  the  rise 
of  interest  in  physics  and  astronomy.  The  major  part  of  Galileo's 
empirical  investigations  had  been  completed.  Bacon  had  set  up  the 
ideal  of  the  inductive  method.  Descartes  had  hit  upon  the  fundamental 
principle  of  his  revolutionary  philosophy  which  he  was  ere  long  to  put 
into  print.  Torricelli,  Huyghens,  and  Boyle  were  soon  to  become  well- 
known  names  even  in  Pascal's  lifetime.  The  birth  of  Sir  Isaac  Newton 
was  but  twenty  years  away.  To  the  scientific  thought  of  the  age  Pascal 
himself  was  to  make  no  insignificant  contribution.  The  trend  of  the 
thought  which  flowed  through  the  minds  of  all  these  thinkers  was  in  the 
direction  of  exalting  once  more  the  human  reason  which  had  for  cen- 


THE  MYSTICISM  OF  BLAISE  PASCAL  59 

turies  been  subjected  in  obedience  to  authorities  of  the  past.  This 
awakened  in  those  who  caught  the  breath  of  the  new  time  a  confidence 
in  the  direct  interrogation  of  nature  by  observation  and  experiment. 
Naturally  the  new  conception  collided  with  the  traditional  conception  of 
the  Church,  according  to  which  man  was  to  accept  all  his  knowledge  in 
terms  sanctioned  by  the  Church  and  to  use  his  reason  only  in  justifica- 
tion of  churchly  formulations.  Thus  there  was  a  complexity  which  the 
sensitive  young  mind  of  the  day  would  find  in  his  thought  environment, 
particularly  if  he  lived  in  Paris  where  all  views  found  able  representatives. 
And  it  was  in  such  an  environment  that  the  sensitive  consciousness  of 
Blaise  Pascal  appeared  and  developed. 

He  was  born  at  Clermont  Ferrand  in  Auvergne  on  July  17,  1623. 
His  father  was  a  judge,  who  combined  with  his  professional  interests 
an  attention  to  science,  especially  to  mathematics  in  which  he  possessed 
a  considerable  ability.  His  mother  died  when  Pascal  was  but  three  years 
of  age.  Her  influence  upon  his  life,  so  far  as  personality  is  concerned, 
was  therefore  very  slight:  but  physically  it  was  very  great,  for  it  was 
from  his  mother's  stock  that  Blaise  inherited  the  weak  constitution  which 
troubled  him  all  his  life.  In  Paris,  whither  the  family  moved  after  the 
mother's  death,  Stephen  Pascal  sought  to  bring  up  his  children  according 
to  a  scheme  of  his  own.  He  played  the  part  of  schoolmaster  himself. 
He  believed  in  reasoning  and  observation  and  was  pleased  to  find  a  ready 
eagerness  on  the  part  of  his  son  to  question  the  how  and  why  of  every- 
thing. The  boy  did  not  stop  merely  with  the  things  which  his  father 
taught  him.  He  became  interested  in  some  of  Nature's  manifestations 
by  himself.  His  sister  tells  of  his  puzzling  over  the  fact  that  a  plate  set 
ringing  by  a  rap  from  a  knife  ceases  to  sound  when  touched.  Again, 
when  withheld  from  the  study  of  geometry  because  his  father  thought 
him  too  young  to  be  occupied  with  its  fascinations,  he  set  to  work  with 
what  few  hints  he  had  to  discover  geometry  for  himself,  and  was  only 
apprehended  at  his  secret  play  by  his  father  when  he  was  trying  to  prove 
that  the  three  angles  of  a  triangle  are  equal  to  two  right  angles.  The 
astonished  father  of  course  could  only  meet  this  irrepressible  apprecia- 
tiveness  on  the  part  of  the  son  by  giving  him  the  books  erstwhile  de- 
nied and  letting  him  master  them  in  his  own  way. 

It  is  quite  to  be  expected  that  so  keen  and  inquisitive  a  mind  as  these 
early  anecdotes  reveal  would  readily  become  interested  in  the  intellectual 
pursuits  which  were  the  avocation  and  re-creation  of  his  father.  Blaise 
became  the  youngest  member  of  a  scientific  club  to  which  his  father 
belonged  and  which,  a  few  years  after  Blaise's  death,  became  the  Acade- 


60  A  PSYCHOLOGICAL  INTERPRETATION  OF  MYSTICISM 

mie  des  Sciences.  The  club  had  a  varied  membership;  men  of  fashion, 
professors,  lawyers,  engineers  and  friars  listened  and  contributed  to  its 
discussions.  Here  he  heard  many  a  learned  theory  propounded  and 
doubtless  many  a  learned  altercation  as  well.  Although  he  himself  had 
to  leave  Paris  with  the  rest  of  the  family  when  his  father  was  appointed 
to  the  Intendantcy  of  Normandy  by  Cardinal  Richelieu,  it  was  not  before 
he  had  sent  to  press  the  advertisement  of  his  work  on  conic  sections. 
Thus  early  as  a  youth  of  sixteen  he  showed  himself  appreciative  to  the 
scientific  element  in  his  environment. 

The  high  degree  of  impressionabihty  so  soon  manifested  in  the  life 
of  Pascal  was  doubtless  rooted  in  a  nervous  instability.  Along  with 
stories  of  precocity  which  have  come  down  to  us  from  his  boyhood  days 
to  excite  our  wonder  and  admiration  there  is  another  which  causes  us  to 
ponder.  "Entre  un  et  deux  ans,"  writes  his  biographer,  "Blaise  a  une 
maladie  inexplicable  qui  dure  onze  a  douze  mois;  il  ne  pouvait  souffrir 
la  vue  de  I'eau;  I'approche  de  son  pere  et  de  sa  mere  lui  donnait  des  con- 
vulsions."^ These  peculiar  phobias  in  themselves  suggest  nervous 
trouble.  And  if  there  is  some  grain  of  truth  in  the  story  that  Blaise  was 
brought  out  of  this  condition  by  an  old  woman  who  professed  to  undo 
a  spell  which  she  admitted  to  have  cast  upon  him,  we  have  evidence  of  an 
unusual  degree  of  suggestibility  in  the  infant.  The  numerous  illnesses 
and  breakdowns  in  Pascal's  Hfe  attendant  upon  his  intellectual  labors 
carry  out  this  first  impression  of  a  highly  strung  nervous  organization. 
It  is  not  too  difficult  to  believe  also  the  story  that  after  a  carriage  acci- 
dent in  which  Pascal  narrowly  escaped  being  precipitated  from  the 
Bridge  of  Neuilly  into  the  Seine  he  was  thereafter  haunted  in  his  sleepless 
nights  and  moments  of  depression  by  the  vision  of  a  precipice  at  his 
bedside  the  sense  of  whose  reahty  could  be  dispelled  only  by  placing  a 
chair  between  his  bed  and  the  visionary  gulf. 

But  turning  from  these  anecdotal  evidences  of  the  close  relationship 
between  the  delicate  nervous  constitution  of  Pascal  and  his  high  sensi- 
tivity, we  may  observe  the  latter  writ  large  in  the  remarkably  diverse 
interests  which  occupied  successive  periods  of  his  intense,  even  feverish, 
career.  Pascal  combined  such  divergent  worlds  as  those  of  science, 
fashionable  society  and  religion.  Or  perhaps  we  should  say  that  he  was 
claimed  by  each  in  turn,  but  wholly  surrendered  himself  to  the  last  alone. 
For  the  three  worlds  did  not  harmonize  in  his  own  mind  and  his  reaction 
to  each  built  up  within  him  a  trio  of  contradictory  selves.  Thus  we  find 
him  learning  that  geometry  and  reason  availed  but  little  when  he  was 

^  Strowski,  Fortunat,  Pascal  d  son  Temps,  Vol.  II,  p.  3. 


TBE  MYSTICISM  OF  BLAISE  PASCAL  61 

absorbed  in  the  concerns  of  the  drawing  room;  while  in  his  early  scien- 
tific period  he  had  been  content  to  estimate  people  solely  according  to 
their  intellectual  calibre;  and  in  his  later  religious  mood  was  to  pour 
contempt  upon  both  science  and  the  world.  Apropos  of  this  hetero- 
geneity of  tendency  in  Pascal  a  writer  in  the  Edinburgh  Review  has 
remarked  suggestively,  "In  highly  organized  natures  the  psychical 
elements  are  sometimes  dissociated — the  machinery,  too  delicate,  too 
complex,  is  often  out  of  gear.  It  is  the  abundance  and  importance  of 
these  elements  that  make  Pascal's  case  unique,  and  his  character  full 
of  apparent  contradictions — so  many  selves,  each  animated  by  a  different 
purpose  and  activity  of  its  own.  His  state  of  mind  was  never,  at  any 
given  moment,  the  sole  and  stable  result  of  all  his  moral  life:  it  was  the 
image  of  one  face  in  a  many-figured  soul."^  These  words  appear  in  a 
popular  magazine  article  and  were  not  meant  to  be  subjected  to  a  minute 
psychological  scrutiny.  It  would  be  better,  however,  instead  of  account- 
ing for  the  various  phases  of  Pascal's  career  as  the  several  expressions  of 
different  mental  elements,  to  say  that  Pascal,  in  reacting  to  three  dis- 
tinctly different  types  of  environment,  organized  within  himself  three 
different  systems  of  response  which  he  never  quite  coordinated.  But 
the  fundamental  point  is  clear.  The  quick  responsiveness  of  Pascal  laid 
him  open  to  diverse  influences  which  called  forth  tendencies  hard  to 
reconcile.  From  the  point  of  view  of  our  explanatory  categories  his 
case  is  especially  significant  for  we  see  their  operation  under  other  than 
religious  circumstances. 

Following  M.  Michaut,^  we  distinguish  four  periods  in  the  life  of 
Pascal.  The  first  extending  from  1623  to  1646  includes  the  events  of  his 
childhood  and  his  earliest  scientific  efforts.  The  second,  from  1646  to 
1649,  is  notable  for  the  first  serious  direction  of  his  attention  to  religious 
matters  as  interpreted  for  him  by  the  Jansenists.  The  third,  1649- 
1654,  is  his  worldly  period,  ending  however  with  a  return  to  his  scientific 
interests.  The  fourth,  1654-1662,  marks  his  final  conversion  and 
retreat  to  the  religious  house  of  Port  Royal,  in  loyalty  to  whose  religious 
ideals  he  remained  for  the  rest  of  his  years. 

We  have  already  said  something  concerning  the  first  period.  The 
efforts  and  ambitions  of  the  lad  were  then  all  of  a  scientific  bent.  The 
father,  beUeving  that  faith  and  reason  have  nothing  to  do  with  one 
another,  by  which  he  meant  that  "Catholicism  need  not  be  suffered  to 

-  Edinburgh  Review,  Vol.  214,  p.  53. 

^  Les  Epoqiies  de  la  Pensee  de  Pascal. 


62  A  PSYCHOLOGICAL  INTERPRETATION  OF  MYSTICISM 

enter  the  sphere  of  daily  life,"^  did  not  teach  more  than  a  conventional 
religious  practice  to  Blaise  and  his  two  sisters,  Gilberte  and  Jacqueline. 
The  result  was  that  Blaise's  first  intellectual  environment  was  cast 
almost  wholly  in  terms  of  the  conceptions  which  were  in  the  air  at  the 
Paris  Club,  and,  when  he  had  gone  to  Rouen  with  the  rest  of  the  family 
on  occasion  of  his  father's  administrative  appointment,  in  terms  of  the 
practical  problems  in  which  his  father  was  involved.  His  reactions  to 
the  interests  of  the  Club  was  the  Traite  des  Sections  Coniques  before 
mentioned,  and  to  the  clerical  necessities  of  his  father's  office  the  inven- 
tion of  an  arithmetical  machine.  The  progress  of  the  latter  performance 
was  well-nigh  stopped  by  the  appearance  of  a  similar  device  from  the 
rival  hand  of  a  Rouen  watchmaker.  The  resentment  manifested  by  the 
young  Pascal  evidences  at  once  a  jealousy  for  his  good  name  and  the  dis- 
gust which  he  felt  at  the  idea  of  such  an  invention  coming  from  the 
hand  of  one  not  skilled  in  the  theory  of  the  matter.  It  reveals  the 
motivation  of  certain  sentiments  of  scientific  excellence  and  of  personal 
fame.  From  the  point  of  view  of  the  Pascal  of  the  Pensees  he  was 
sadly  astray  amid  the  vanities  of  the  world. 

But  the  process,  thus  started,  of  building  up  a  scientific  self  was  not 
to  go  on  uninterrupted.  In  the  year  1646  an  event  occurred  which 
placed  a  new  set  of  considerations  before  the  mind  of  Blaise.  His 
father,  one  January  morning,  dislocated  his  thigh  by  a  fall  on  the  ice. 
To  aid  him  in  his  recovery  he  had  recourse  to  the  services  of  two  gentle- 
men, landowners  near  Rouen,  who  had  considerable  skill  in  bone-setting. 
But  these  men  had  other  interests  than  their  land  and  their  bone-setting. 
During  the  three  months  they  were  present  in  Stephen's  household 
they  improved  the  time  by  talking  of  religious  matters  to  Jaqueline  and 
Blaise.  Gilberte,  the  older  sister,  was  married  by  this  time,  and  so  did 
not  partake  of  this  experience.  The  kind  of  religious  thought  which 
imbued  the  two  guests  was  what  was  known  as  Jansenism.  The  Jan- 
senist  movement  had  its  doctrinal  origin  in  the  theories  of  a  Dutch 
theologian  who  composed  a  ponderous  work  on  the  theology  of  St. 
Augustine  in  1640.  The  chief  ideas  of  the  ''Augustinus"  were  the  help- 
lessness, misery  and  weakness  of  man;  the  non-indigenous  character  of 
his  present  evil  state;  and  the  necessity  of  some  heaven-sent  remedy  to 
redeem  him  therefrom.^  To  the  young  Pascal  these  ideas  made  a 
strong  appeal.  The  logical  manner  in  which  they  were  set  forth  in  the 
Jansenist  writings  attracted  his  geometrically-trained  intellect  while 

*  St.  Cyres,  Viscount,  Pascal,  p.  70. 

*  See  St.  Cyres,  Pascal,  Chap.  6. 


THE  MYSTICISM  OF  BLAISE  PASCAL  63 

his  own  physical  sufferings  lent  color  to  the  doctrine  of  man's  wretched- 
ness. His  acceptance  of  these  teachings  is  known  as  his  first  conversion, 
but  the  experience  seems  to  have  been  a  wholly  theoretical  affair.  Its 
immediate  fruit  was  his  induction  of  the  whole  family  into  the  same 
views,  Jacqueline  first,  this  father  second,  and  Gilberte  and  her  hus- 
band later.  Not  long  after  this  a  nervous  breakdown,  accompanied  by 
"violent  and  prolonged  neuralgia,  partial  paralysis  of  the  lower  limbs, 
inability  to  swallow,"  etc.,  gave  him  an  opportunity  to  practice  resigna- 
tion to  the  will  of  God  under  trying  circumstances.  But  the  time  was 
not  yet  for  the  ideas  implanted  in  these  days  to  bear  their  ripe  fruit. 
They  were  yet  to  undergo  incubation  while  Pascal  busied  himself  still 
with  science  and  later  with  the  affairs  of  the  salon.  Although  he  knew 
the  doctrine  he  was  not  yet  moved  to  surrender  his  scientific  pride  and 
ambition  to  ends  solely  religious.  His  religious  system  of  reactions  was 
not  sufficiently  developed  to  become  the  full  bearer  of  his  personality. 
The  scientific  self  was  still  to  the  fore  and  underwent  yet  greater  expan- 
sion during  this  second  period. 

For  in  the  autumn  of  1646  all  of  Pascal's  scientific  tendencies  were 
stimulated  by  the  news  of  an  experiment  by  TorriceUi  which,  it  was 
said,  would  throw  light  on  the  question  as  to  whether  nature  really 
could  endure  a  vacuum.  Blaise  and  his  father  were  aroused  to  repeat 
the  experiment,  for  one  of  the  best  glass  factories  in  France  was  situated 
at  Rouen  and  made  the  securing  of  the  proper  tubes  easy.  They  inverted 
a  tube  filled  with  mercury  with  its  open  end  submerged  in  a  cup  of 
mercury  and  found  that  instead  of  running  out,  the  mercury  remained 
high  in  the  tube,  though  withdrawing  a  few  inches  from  the  upper  end. 
The  experiment  was  also  tried  with  wine  and  water  by  using  gigantic 
tubes  forty  feet  long.  The  same  principle  held.  The  work  of  the  Pascals 
stirred  up  a  huge  deal  of  discussion — opposition  from  upholders  of  old 
Aristotelian  notions,  and  defenders  among  sympathetic  members  of  the 
Paris  Club.  Even  the  great  Descartes  was  interested  and  paid 
young  Pascal  a  visit  while  the  latter  was  on  his  sick  bed  as  a  result  of 
the  intensity  of  those  days  of  scientific  application.  In  November  of 
1647  at  the  request  of  Pascal,  who  was  too  ill  to  carry  out  the  test  him- 
self, Florin  Perier,  his  brother-in-law,  performed  the  experiment  with 
mercury,  both  at  the  foot  and  at  the  top  of  the  Puy-de-dome,  a  high 
mountain  near  Clermont.  This  clinched  Torricelli's  conjecture  that  the 
mercury  which  remains  in  the  inverted  tube  is  held  in  place  by  the  pres- 
sure of  the  earth's  atmosphere.  In  the  writing  of  explanations,  inter- 
pretations, and  defences  of  his  work  Pascal  experienced  the  pride  and 


64  A  PSYCHOLOGICAL  INTERPRETATION  OF  MYSTICISM 

satisfaction  of  seeing  himself  in  the  center  of  the  attention  of  his  scien- 
tific world.  While  all  the  flush  of  this  was  upon  him,  an  event  occurred 
which  for  a  time  pushed  his  religious  self  yet  further  into  the  background. 
In  1648  Pascal  paid  a  visit  to  Port  Royal  de  Paris,  the  chief  rehgious 
house  of  the  Jansenists.  In  conversation  with  the  chaplain  the  latter 
gently  rebuked  him  for  a  certain  vanity  and  confidence  in  reason  which 
he  displayed.  This  brought  clearly  to  the  consciousness  of  Pascal  the 
fact  that  behind  the  sober  logic  which  had  been  one  of  the  attractive 
features  of  Jansenism  as  he  first  saw  it  there  was  really  an  emphasis 
upon  a  supematuralism  which  held  the  wisdom  of  reason  of  but  little 
account  in  the  question  of  man's  ultimate  destiny.  But  Pascal  was 
still  in  the  ardor  of  his  love  for  geometry  and  the  method  for  which 
geometry  stands.  Back  among  his  friends  of  the  Paris  Club  also,  all  his 
earlier  attitudes  were  revived,  and  his  religious  mood  at  Rouen  doubtless 
became  pale  and  remote  in  his  imagination.  At  any  rate,  although  he 
sympathized  with  the  wish  of  his  sister  Jacqueline  to  become  a  nun  at 
Port  Royal,  he  began  to  drift  away  from  the  ideas  of  Jansenism  in  the 
direction  of  Cartesian  conceptions  of  God — conceptions  developed  in  a 
truly  geometrical  spirit.  In  other  words  the  scientific  self  bade  fair  to 
assimilate  the  religious  self.  In  fact  he  had  gotten  so  far  by  1651,  when 
his  father  died,  that  his  sympathy  with  Jacqueline's  project  vanished 
and  he  reproached  her  bitterly  for  taking  the  veil  and  leaving  him,  even 
though  she  could  reply  that  her  father's  death  was  the  event  which  made 
her  free  to  carry  out  her  own  purpose. 

But  now  the  third  period  dawned  evoking  in  Pascal  yet  a  third  system 
of  reactions.  About  the  year  before  Stephen  Pascal  died  Blaise  had 
fallen  in  with  the  young  Duke  of  Roannez,  "an  aristocrat  of  scientific 
tastes  and  fond  of  the  society  of  learned  men."^  This  friendship  drew 
him  into  the  life  of  the  Paris  drawuig  rooms.  Here  Pascal  found  that 
his  scientific  self  had  but  scant  respect.  Such  an  arbiter  elegantiarum  as 
the  Chevalier  de  Mere  soon  taught  him  that  science  does  not  give  one 
either  poHte  behaviour  or  taste  or  feeling.  The  axioms  and  definitions 
of  mathematics  only  make  the  geometer  ridiculous  when  he  endeavors 
to  apply  them  to  matters  so  foreign  to  their  domain  as  the  manners  of 
polite  society.  These  latter  must  be  judged  otherwise  than  by  reason. 
For  a  time  Pascal  submitted  himself  to  the  rules  of  the  game,  studied  to 
acquire  an  intuitive  perception  of  the  proper  needs  of  each  social  situa- 
tion, smoothed  out  his  literary  style,  and  even  wrote  a  discourse  on  love. 
The  philosophy  of  polite  circles  being  that  of  Epictetus  and  Montaigne, 

'  St.  Cyres,  Pascal,  p.  133. 


THE  MYSTICISM  OF  BALISE  PASCAL  65 

he  devoted  himself  assiduously  to  these  authors.  By  the  latter  he  was 
taught  that  there  is  nothing  so  fallible  as  the  human  reason.  Geometry, 
physics,  medicine,  history,  ethics,  politics,  jurisprudence — all  these  in 
the  eyes  of  the  great  sceptic  were  open  to  grave  doubt.  Pascal  who  was 
fresh  from  learning  the  lesson  of  the  limitations  of  his  mathematical 
applications  found  these  ideas  not  unpalatable.  He  had  puzzled  over 
the  validity  of  the  axioms  himself.  Curiously  enough  this  learning  of 
the  world  had  the  effect  of  opening  the  way  for  the  return  of  ideas  which 
Pascal  had  laid  aside  after  his  conversation  with  the  chaplain  at  Port 
Royal.  For  with  the  doubt  of  the  reliability  of  mathematics  came  a 
doubt  of  the  geometrically  founded  God  of  Descartes.  How  could  one 
rest  satisfied  with  a  God  which  had  no  surer  basis  than  the  one  furnished 
by  the  limited  method  of  mathematics?  The  insufficiency  of  the  human 
reason  to  attain  to  God,  which  Jansenism  had  taught,  began  to  seem 
more  acceptable  doctrine.  Furthermore  did  not  Montaigne  reenforce 
the  first  thesis  of  Jansen,  though  with  much  wider  wealth  of  illustration, 
that  man  with  his  useless  speculation  and  ill-directed  moral  efforts  is  in  a 
sorry  state?  The  difference  was  that  Montaigne  had  no  further  thesis 
of  a  divine  grace  to  help  one  out.  "I  should  have  loved  with  all  my 
heart  the  minister  of  so  great  a  vengeance,"  Pascal  remarked  later  in  his 
Conversation  with  M.  de  Saci,  "if  being  a  disciple  of  the  Church  by  faith, 
he  had  followed  the  rules  of  ethics,  in  bringing  men  whom  he  had  so 
usefully  humiliated,  not  to  irritate  by  new  crimes  him  who  alone  can  draw 
them  from  the  crimes  which  he  has  convicted  them  of  not  being  able 
even  to  know." 

However,  although  usages  and  the  philosophy  of  polite  society  might 
recall  the  thoughts  of  his  first  Jansenic  period  as  to  the  limitations  of 
scientific  reasoning,  he  was  by  no  means  negligent  of  scientific  activity 
during  this  worldly  period.  "The  years  1653-1654  were  those  of  his 
principle  mathematical  discoveries."^  At  this  time  he  wrote  his  treat- 
ises on  the  arithmetical  triangle  and  the  theory  of  number  as  well  as 
numerous  other  pamphlets.  But  there  are  evidences  that  beneath  aU 
this  activity,  social  as  well  as  scientific,  the  soul  of  Pascal  was  not  at  rest. 
From  the  month  of  December  1653,  as  he  afterward  confessed  to  his 
sister,  the  world  had  palled  upon  him.  "II  se  sentit  tout  d'un  coup 
*un  grand  mepris  du  monde,'  et  'un  degout  insupportable  pour  les  per- 
sonnes  qui  en  sont.'  "^  As  Strowski  points  out  the  very  number  of  the 
scientific  pamphlets  indicates  a  feverish  activity.  Perhaps  Pascal 
'  Boutroux,  Emile,  Pascal,  p.  65. 
*  Strowski,  Pascal  et  Son  Temps,  p.  280. 


66  A  PSYCHOLOGICAL  INTERPRETATION  OF  MYSTICISM 

absorbed  himself  in  mathematics  in  order  to  divert  his  mind.  It  is  not 
unlikely  that  at  this  time  some  of  the  questions  began  to  haunt  him 
which  he  afterward  formulated  with  such  poignancy  in  the  Pensees. 
What  is  the  lot  of  man  after  death?  Will  he  fall  into  nothingness  or  into 
the  hands  of  an  angry  God?  What  avails  knowledge,  glory  or  power  in 
the  question  of  man's  eternal  destiny?  However  it  was,  there  must  have 
been  some  elaboration  and  development  among  the  system  of  tendencies 
which  made  up  his  religious  self,  for  he  was  soon  to  meet  the  great 
crisis  which  ushered  in  the  last  great  period  of  his  life. 

Toward  the  autumn  of  1654  the  need  of  discussing  the  turmoil  which 
he  found  within  him  led  Pascal  to  visit  his  sister  Jacquehne  at  Port 
Royal.  The  account  which  she  gives  of  his  attitude  in  a  letter  to  her 
sister  indicates  the  profound  dissatisfaction  of  the  ununified  self.  "It 
grieved  me  much  to  see  how  wretched  he  was.  He  told  me  how  he 
longed  to  be  free  of  all  his  occupations,  and  to  cut  adrift  from  the  world, 
Between  his  detestations  of  its  foUies  and  the  reproaches  of  his  conscience. 
he  feels  very  much  more  detached  from  it  than  ever  he  was  before.  On 
the  other  hand,  he  feels  himself  wholly  forsaken  by  the  grace  of  God. 
He  has  striven  hard  to  regain  it,  although  all  the  while  he  felt  that  the 
impulse  to  do  so  came  from  his  own  heart  and  conscience  and  not  from 
above.  "3  This  was  but  the  first  of  many  visits.  His  sister  listened 
sympathetically  "without  trying  to  put  any  kind  of  pressure  on  him." 
The  inner  struggle  continued  for  at  least  a  month  longer  when  suddenly, 
on  the  night  of  November  23,  1654,  it  reached  its  resolution.  Just  what 
happened  is  still  the  subject  of  conjecture,  as  Pascal  never  talked  of  the 
experience  with  anyone,  at  least  not  so  that  any  report  has  come  down  to 
us.  After  his  death  a  slip  of  parchment  was  found  in  the  hning  of  his 
coat  on  which  was  written  a  number  of  disconnected  sentences,  expres- 
sive of  a  sense  of  profound  rapture  and  renunciation.     It  runs  as  follows: 

In  the  year  of  Grace,  1654. 
On  Monday,  23rd  of  November,  Feast  of  St.  Clement,  Pope 
and  Martyr,  and  of  the  other  Saints  in  the  Martyrology. 
Vigil  of  St.  Chrysogonus,  Martyr,  and  others. 
Between  about  half-past  ten  in  the  evening  until 
half-past  twelve. 

Fire. 
God  of  Abraham,  God  of  Isaac,  God  of  Jacob. 
Not  the  God  of  the  philosophers  and  the  wise. 
*  St.  Cyres,  Pascal,  p.  193. 


THE  MYSTICISM  OF  BLAISE  PASCAL  67 

Certainty,  certainty. 

God  of  Jesus  Christ. 

'My  God  and  thy  God' 

'Thy  God  shall  be  my  God.' 

Forgetfulness  of  the  world  and  all  but  God. 

He  is  found  only  in  the  ways  shown  by  the  Gospel. 

Greatness  of  the  soul  of  man. 

'O   righteous   Father,   the  world,   hath  not  known  Thee, 

but  I  have  known  Thee.' 

Joy>  joy,  joy,  tears  of  joy. 

I  have  fallen  away  from  Him. 

'They  have  forsaken  Me,  the  fountain  of  living  waters.' 

'My  God,  forsakest  Thou  me?' 

May  I  not  fall  from  him  forever. 

'This  is  life  eternal,  that  they  might  know  Thee,  the  only 

God,  and  Jesus  Christ,  Whom  Thou  has  sent.' 

Jesus  Christ. 

Jesus  Christ. 

I  have  fallen  away;  I  have  fled  from  Him,  denied  Him, 

crucified  Him. 

May  I  not  fall  from  Him  forever. 

We  keep  hold  of  Him  only  in  the  way  shown  by  the  gospel. 

How  sweet  is  utter  renunciation. 

Absolute  submission  to  Jesus  Christ  and  to  my  director. 

'I  will  not  forget  thy  word.'     Amen. 

That  we  have  in  these  Hues  the  record  of  some  mystical  experience 
there  can  be  no  doubt.  Of  its  precise  nature,  whether  vision  or  ecstasy, 
we  may  be  uncertain.  It  may  have  been  a  combination  of  both.  In  any 
case  it  was  a  unique  experience  for  Pascal  and  marks  the  complete  iden- 
tification of  his  personahty  with  his  religious  tendencies.  For  it  was  a 
matter  of  but  a  few  weeks  before  he  left  his  worldly  environment  and 
took  up  his  residence  at  Port  Royal.  "Thenceforward,  although  he  was 
never  ofiicially  enrolled  in  their  community,  a  great  part  of  his  time 
was  spent  among  the  Port  Royal  'Hermits'— a  group  of  laymen,  who  led 
an  austere,  semi-monastic  existence  at  the  abbey-gates."^"  There,  he 
became  known,  first  as  a  distinguished  penitent,  and  later  as  a  defender 
of  Jansenist  views  against  Jesuitical  casuistry  and  laxity,  in  his  famous 
Provincial  Letters.    The  last  three  years  of  his  life  were  full  of  physical 

1°  St.  Cyres,  Pascal,  p.  197. 


68  A  PSYCHOLOGICAL  INTERPRETATION  OF  MYSTICISM 

suffering.  He  had  in  mind  to  write  an  Apology  for  Christianity.  But 
his  ill-health  prevented  this  from  getting  beyond  the  stage  of  disconnected 
observations  which  we  now  read  as  his  "Thoughts."  His  closing  days 
were  marked  by  an  asceticism  which  has  led  some  to  think  that  he  died 
insane.  Only  once  did  he  revert  to  mathematics  in  this  fourth  period, 
when  he  sought  to  distract  his  attention  from  violent  pains  in  his  head  by 
occupying  his  thoughts  with  the  problem  of  the  cycloid.  He  died  in 
1662. 

In  this  case  of  Pascal  we  see  how  a  complex  environment  acting 
upon  an  over-sensitive  soul  may  so  divide  the  tendencies  among  het- 
erogeneous interests  that  the  sense  of  unification,  if  achieved  at  all,  must 
come  through  some  cataclysmic  identification  of  the  whole  personality 
with  one  or  the  other  of  these  interests  to  the  subordination,  if  not 
exclusion,  of  the  rest.  A  temperament  more  phlegmatic  than  Pascal's 
would  doubtless  not  have  responded  so  readily  to  three  such  different 
environments,  to  begin  with.  Certainly  it  would  not  have  reacted  to 
them  as  vehemently  as  did  Pascal.  But  Pascal,  with  a  keen  awareness, 
sharpened  by  his  nervous  troubles  to  an  almost  intuitive  insight,  gave 
himself  profoundly  to  whatever  engaged  his  attention.  The  result  was 
that  his  scientific  environment  called  out  one  system  of  reactions, 
organized  about  the  sentiments  of  pride  and  ambition;  his  social  envir- 
onment called  out  another  based  on  vanity  and  perhaps  romantic  love; 
while  Port  Royal  summoned  yet  another  system  in  opposition  to  both 
of  these,  centering  about  the  sentiments  of  absolute  self-surrender  and 
renunciation. 

The  attitude  which  Jansenism  fostered  was  started  in  its  formation 
early  in  his  young  manhood,  before  adolescence  had  passed.  He  was 
twenty-three  when  the  accident  of  his  father  brought  the  two  Jansenist 
representatives  to  the  home  at  Rouen.  The  impulse  toward  self- 
surrender  was  aroused  at  that  time,  and  Pascal  learned  that  one  might 
expect  some  extraordinary  visitation  of  God  at  least  once  in  a  lifetime. 
But  this  impulse  did  not  expand  to  dominating  power  until  it  had  time 
for  subconscious  elaboration  and  had  received  reenforcement  from  some 
of  Pascal's  later  experiences.  For  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  Pascal's 
ill-health  deepened  his  sense  of  insufi&ciency  and  weakness.  Further, 
his  confidence  in  his  mathematical  and  scientific  intellect,  which  was 
his  chief  source  of  personal  pride  and  power,  was  shaken  by  his  salon 
experiences  and  the  teachings  of  Montaigne.  So  even  his  most  worldly 
activities  aided  his  mystical  development  in  a  negative  way  by  running 
counter  to  his  science.    That  is,  the  attitudes  aroused  by  fashion  con- 


THE  MYSTICISM  OF  BLAISE  PASCAL  69 

flicted  with  the  reactions  stirred  by  science  thus  releasing  more  fully  the 
tendencies  evoked  by  Jansenism.  Ultimately  a  line  of  division  was 
drawn  between  this  last  and  the  other  two,  which  together  became  the 
self  which  must  be  surrendered.  In  the  crisis  of  November  23,  1654, 
there  took  place  a  rearrangement  of  all  the  tendencies.  The  system  of 
religious  attitudes  became  paramount,  and  henceforth  Pascal's  whole 
life  was  organized  about  them  as  a  center.  His  fundamental  self  was 
thereafter  rehgious.  If  ever  the  old  attitude  functioned  after  that  it  was 
in  the  service  of  the  religious  self.  The  old  self  or  selves  were  gone. 
Two  years  before  his  death  Pascal  wrote  to  a  friend  that  while  he  con- 
sidered geometry  a  most  beautiful  occupation  he  yet  felt  it  to  be  so  use- 
less that  he  would  not  take  two  steps  in  its  behalf. 

A  comparison  of  Pascal's  mysticism  with  that  of  St.  Teresa  shows 
how  influential  surrounding  conditions  are  in  determining  the  character 
of  the  mystical  experience.  Both  of  these  individuals  were  possessed 
of  a  rare  sensitiveness  and  responsiveness  to  the  influences  which  played 
about  them.  In  both  the  normal  human  instincts  organized  into  senti- 
ments and  attitudes  in  their  adjustive  reactions  to  their  social  environ- 
ment. Both  experienced  a  division  of  their  tendencies  which  was 
eventually  overcome.  But  the  hne  of  division  and  its  cause  differed  in 
the  two  cases. 

St.  Teresa's  environment  had  been  a  simple  one.  From  childhood 
she  had  felt  its  pull  upon  those  tendencies  which  go  to  make  up  the 
character  of  the  Medieval  nun.  Its  ideal  of  the  life  absolutely  devoted 
to  the  vision  of  God  was  held  steadily  before  her.  Her  life  was,  therefore, 
a  continuous  striving  after  a  constantly  purer  and  finer  realization  of  that 
vision.  Her  struggle  was  to  keep  all  of  her  tendencies  from  finding  their 
realization  in  any  object  not  immediately  related  to  this.  Her  problem 
seemed  to  be,  not  so  much  the  reconcihation  of  conflicting  systems  of 
reaction — for  her  religious  self  was  foremost,  though  not  in  absolute 
control,  from  the  time  she  entered  the  monastery — as  it  was  to  conquer 
one  or  two  wayward  impulses  which  were  hard  to  control  in  behalf  of 
her  single  ideal.  Her  chief  trouble  was  with  the  sex  impulse.  When 
that  was  finally  conquered,  through  the  subconscious  maturing  of  her 
striving  during  many  years,  her  response  to  the  steady  pull  of  her 
environment  was  an  almost  continuous  series  of  mystical  experiences. 

Pascal's  environment  made  a  different  demand  upon  him.  For  one 
thing  it  was  complex.  Instead  of  drawing  him  in  a  single  direction,  it 
drew  him  in  three.  Each  phase  called  out  a  system  of  reactions  more 
or  less  contradictory  to  the  others.    This  fact  in  itself  would  doubtless 


70  A  PSYCHOLOGICAL  INTERPRETATION  OF  MYSTICISM 

have  resulted  in  some  sort  of  psychological  crisis.  And  when  we  add 
that  the  religious  teaching  which  began  the  development  of  the  re- 
ligious system  of  reactions  stressed  the  necessity  of  a  cataclysmic 
reception  of  Grace,  we  can  see  how  the  mystical  exaltation  of  Pascal 
would  tend  to  be  compressed  into  a  few  hours  of  intense  experience 
rather  than  be  spread  over  the  years  indefinitely.  In  other  words,  the 
suggestion  implanted  by  the  Jansenists,  although  taking  some  years  to 
mature,  was  of  the  kind  to  find  its  fulfillment  in  one  short  explosive 
experience.  That  was  what  the  young  Pascal  was  taught  to  expect  and 
that  was  what  happened.  Not  but  that  there  was  growth  in  his  religious 
life  after  the  crisis,  but  this  did  not  partake  of  the  character  of  ecstatic 
exaltation  so  far  as  can  be  made  out.  The  one  outstanding  experience 
of  a  sense  of  immediate  contact  with  his  religious  object  occurred  on  that 
November  night.     We  have  no  record  of  any  other. 

Pascal,  like  St.  Teresa,  did  not  look  upon  his  remarkable  experience  as 
called  out  by  his  environment.  It  was  nothing  short  of  a  miracle,  a 
revelation  from  a  world  invisible.  "If  you  are  united  to  God,"  he 
writes  in  the  Pensees,  "it  must  be  by  grace,  not  by  nature."  Again  in 
defining  a  miracle  he  says,  "It  is  an  efifect  which  exceeds  the  natural 
force  of  the  means  employed  for  it:  and  a  non-miracle  is  an  effect  which 
does  not  exceed  the  natural  force  of  the  means  employed  for  it."^^  But 
Pascal  could  not  estimate  the  astounding  possibihties  of  the  reactions  of  a 
highly  sensitive  nervous  organism;  nor  did  he  know  anything  of  such 
things  as  subconscious  maturings  of  impressions  and  tendencies.  His 
concept  of  the  natural  was  based  solely  on  his  understanding  of  physical 
and  mathematical  laws.  Biology  had  not  yet  arisen,  and  the  greatest 
thinker  of  the  time,  Descartes,  had  been  obliged  to  explain  animals  as 
marvelous  machines.  Consequently  Pascal  could  not  be  familiar  with 
the  notion  that  a  stimulus  may  evoke  from  a  sensitive  organism  a  response 
quite  out  of  proportion  to  its  own  character.  Abnormal  Psychology 
shows  us  that  the  effect  upon  an  organism  sometimes  quite  astonishingly 
"exceeds  the  natural  force  of  the  means  employed  for  it,"  without  at  all 
lifting  the  phenomenon  in  question  out  of  the  realm  of  understood  natural 
processes.  A  physician  once  told  the  writer  of  a  hysterical  case  which 
came  under  his  observation,  in  which  a  young  girl  suddenly  lost  the  use 
of  her  lower  limbs  at  happening  to  see  her  pet  dog  shot  by  an  irate  post- 
man. Here  we  have  an  effect — familiar  enough  to  the  specialist  in  ner- 
vous diseases  and  to  the  student  of  Abnormal  Psychology — which  is 
totally  disproportionate  to  the  means  which  produced  it.     In  the  Middle 

"  Thoughts,  Eng.  tr.  by  Wight,  1859,  Chap.  XXIII,  p.  341. 


THE  MYSTICISM  OF  BLAISE  PASCAL  71 

Ages  such  an  accident  might  have  gotten  the  postman  hanged  on  the 
charge  of  being  in  league  with  evil  spirits.  But  today  we  recognize  that 
the  effect  had  most  of  its  cause,  not  in  a  world  of  malign  spirits,  but  in 
the  hysterical  instability  of  the  girl.  Similarly  we  recognize  today,  in 
such  remarkable  experiences  as  those  of  Pascal  and  St.  Teresa,  how  great 
a  part  is  played  by  the  enhanced  sensitivity  of  such  persons.  Pascal,  of 
course,  would  have  been  the  last  person  in  the  world  to  look  for  the  cause 
of  his  experience  in  his  own  self  in  its  reactions  upon  its  environment. 
But  that  is  because  he  identified  self  with  the  processes  of  clearest  con- 
sciousness. He  knew  that  he  had  received  an  impetus  from  the  teach- 
ings of  Jansen.  He  knew  also  that  he  had  by  experience  and  study 
seen  certain  elements  of  these  teachings  corroborated  elsewhere.  He 
knew,  as  his  pre-conversion  confession  to  his  sister  shows,  that  he  had 
made  futile  attempts  to  attain  to  the  ideal  of  these  teachings.  All  these 
matters  had  passed  through  his  alert  consciousness.  Comparing  them 
separately  or  all  together  with  the  climax  which  came  on  that  November 
night,  he  could  find  nothing  in  them  equal  to  its  profundity  and  satis- 
fying character.  What  happened,  therefore,  must  have  been  a  miracle 
of  Grace.  It  did  not  come  "by  nature."  But  this  reasoning  leaves 
one  thing  out  of  count,  his  own  sensitive  temperament,  with  its  capacity 
for  subconscious  rumination,  and  its  responsibility  for  the  depth  of  the 
cleft  which  he  found  within  him.  His  biographers  have  not  hesitated 
to  say  frankly  that  he  suffered  from  neurasthenia  and  have  pointed  to 
his  almost  continuous  illness  as  a  factor  in  the  interpretation  of  his 
career.  But  Pascal  himself  never  seems  to  have  realized  that  one's 
bodily  state  may  have  a  vast  deal  to  do  with  the  reception  one  gives  to 
different  ideas,  and  may  even  play  its  part  in  the  higher  experiences  of 
religion.  There  are  plaintive  passages  in  the  Thoughts  which  show  that 
other  people  puzzled  him  by  an  indifference  to  some  ideas  which  were 
of  the  utmost  moment  to  himself.  One  matter  that  never  ceased  to 
excite  his  wonder  was  the  fact  that  many  individuals  seem  never  to  exer- 
cise themselves  over  the  problem  of  the  immortality  of  the  soul.  "This 
negligence,  in  an  affair  wherein  the  question  is  concerning  themselves, 
their  eternity,  and  their  all,  irritates  me  much  more  than  it  excites  my 
pity:  it  astonishes  and  overwhelms  me;  it  is  for  me  something  mon- 
strous."^ To  us  today  Pascal's  irritation  simply  serves  to  show  how 
different  was  his  temperament  from  that  of  the  common  run  of  humanity 
— how  enhanced  in  its  sensitivity.  We  must  take  account  of  the  fact 
that  he  was  an  invalid  when  he  wrote  his  Pensees  and  that  some  of  his 
"  Thoughts,  Wight's  tr.  Chap.  I,  p.  151. 


72  A  PSYCHOLOGICAL  INTERPRETATION  OF  MYSTICISM 

sentiments — the  extolling  of  sickness,  e.  g. — are  but  the  expression  of  a 
sick  man's  fancies.  And  knowing  what  we  do  of  the  richness  of  sub- 
conscious operations  in  such  natures  as  his  we  are  more  ready  to  believe 
that  his  great  experience  was  not  contra  naturam,  but  fully  in  accord 
with  understood  processes.  To  use  his  own  terms  we  would  prefer  to 
say  that  Grace  operated  through  nature  instead  of  in  opposition  to  it. 
His  experience  of  objectivity  on  that  night  arose  from  his  own  inner 
depths. 

Thus  we  see  that  Pascal's  mysticism  may  be  traced  to  the  interplay 
of  the  same  three  factors  operative  in  the  case  of  St.  Teresa.  A  sensitive 
temperament  furnished  the  ground  for  intense  reaction.  The  environ- 
ment furnished  the  basis  for  diversification  of  tendencies  as  well  as  the 
special  suggestion  of  a  psychological  crisis.  And  the  instincts  in  response 
to  the  environment  organized  into  systems  of  contradictory  sentiment, 
the  problem  of  whose  unification  gave  especial  pertinence  to  the  envir- 
onmental suggestion.  The  result,  after  a  period  of  subconscious  elab- 
oration, was  an  experience  of  division  and  strain  issuing  in  a  climax  of 
unification,  manifested  in  a  profound  affective  experience  which  cen- 
tered about  the  sentiment  of  utter  self-renunciation. 


CIL\PTER  V 

Conclusion 

We  have  analysed  the  workings  of  our  three  factors  in  three  cases  of 
mystical  development;  and  we  have  found  that  it  is  possible  to  discuss 
mystical  experiences  in  terms  of  processes  which  we  already  understand. 
With  our  specific  cases  in  mind  we  may  profitably  return  to  a  more  gen- 
eral discussion  of  the  three  factors  with  some  few  additional  illustrations 
in  order  to  deepen  our  impression  of  their  persistence  in  the  mystical 
experience.  We  shall  then  set  down  what  conclusions  have  arisen  from 
the  course  of  our  study. 

It  will  be  observed  that  we  have  not  used  with  the  word  tempera- 
ment any  suggestion  of  objective  content.  We  have  avoided  such 
phrases  as  mystical  temperament,  philosophical  temperament,  artistic 
temperament,  etc.  For  these  phrases  name  the  temperament  from  the 
object  through  which  it  finds  expression.  Such  language  while  con- 
venient, perhaps,  for  popular  speech  is  nevertheless  misleading  in  that 
it  implies  within  the  organism  a  tendency  toward  specific  objects  even 
before  it  has  bad  experience  of  those  objects.  We  have  sought  rather 
to  uphold  the  view  throughout  our  discussion  that  temperament  is,  for 
the  most  part,  a  matter  of  degree  of  sensitivity,  of  quickness  and  thor- 
oughness of  reaction  and  response.  It  may  indeed  involve  varying 
degrees  of  emphasis  upon  the  cognitive,  affectional  and  volitional  phases 
of  consciousness.  But  the  specific  materials  upon  which  it  operates  are 
afforded  by  the  environment.  Thus  we  do  not  believe  that  the  mystics 
were  born  with  an  irresistable  bias  in  the  direction  of  mystical  experi- 
ences. Rather  they  were  especially  sensitive  natures  whose  environ- 
ments were  such  as  to  lead  them  to  react  in  ways  which  produced  mystical 
experiences.  Neither  do  we  find  it  necessary  to  assume  that  their  sen- 
sitiveness made  them  aware  of  a  transcendent  reality  seen  through  the 
interstices  of  our  common  world.  For,  as  Professor  Coe  and  others  have 
pointed  out,  the  revelation  which  the  mystic  claims  is  always  found  to 
be  in  accordance  with  the  current  teachings  as  to  what  the  transcendent 
world  ought  to  be.^  The  sensitiveness  of  the  mystic  simply  made  him 
unusually  responsive  to  his  environment,  and  as  he  always  finds  esti- 
mations of  value  among  the  environmental  influences,  to  the  formula- 
tions of  the  highest  values  of  the  social  group. 

'  See  his  article  in  the  Hibhert  Journal,  Vol.  VI,  1908-9,  p.  359,  "The  Sources  of 
the  Mystical  Revelation."  Also  see  Sir  Frederick  PoUock's  article  "The  Relation  of 
the  Mystic  Experience  to  Philosophy,"  Hibhert  Journal  for  October  1913. 


74  A  PSYCHOLOGICAL  INTERPRETATION  OF  MYSTICISM 

We  have  not  concerned  ourselves  in  this  study  to  trace  the  sensitive- 
ness of  the  mystic  to  its  sources.  We  have  been  content  to  point  it  out 
as  simply  there  as  something  to  be  reckoned  with.  However,  as  we  had 
occasion  to  observe  in  connection  with  St.  Teresa's  case,  there  is  some 
foundation  for  thinking  that  in  general  its  origin  is  physiological.  The 
history  of  mysticism  tends  to  support  this  conception.  We  may  in  this 
final  rounding  out  of  our  thought  indicate  the  evidences  which  show  this. 
The  frequency  with  which  the  sensitive  temperament  of  the  mystic  is 
conjoined  with  actual  ill-health  is  remarkable.  We  have  noted  the 
instances  of  Teresa  and  Pascal  in  detail.  These  are  but  two  out  of  the 
many  that  the  history  of  mysticism  affords.  Catherine  of  Genoa  exhibi- 
ted a  number  of  nervous  disturbances — ^paralysis  of  a  mobile  and  local- 
ized sort,  anesthesias,  hyperesthesia,  localized  automatic  movements, 
shifting  emotional  moods,  etc.^  Al  Ghazzali  suffered  a  loss  of  speech, 
of  all  appetite  for  food,  and  of  the  ability  to  swallow  either  bread  or 
water,  just  before  his  entrance  into  Sufism.^  The  rehgious  development 
of  St.  Francis  did  not  begin  until  after  he  had  had  a  protracted  sickness, 
"because,"  says  one  of  his  early  biographers  quaintly,  "the  infliction  of 
tribulation  giveth  understanding  to  the  spirit."  In  later  life  he  was 
greatly  perturbed  over  the  fact  that  his  frequent  illnesses  compelled  him 
to  be  more  lenient  to  his  body  than  he  wished  to  be.^  Of  Madame  Guyon 
we  are  told  that  she  was  born  "un  mois  avant  le  terme  ordinaire,  a  la 
suite  d'une  frayeur  que  sa  mere  avait  eprouvee.  Pendant  longtemps  on 
la  crut  morte;  et  ce  n'est  guere  qu'au  bout  cinq  semaines  que  Ton  put 
avoir  quelque  esperance  de  la  conserver.  Son  enfance  ne  fut  qu'une 
suite  d'infirmites  et  de  douleurs  et  toute  sa  vie  ressentit  de  la  frele  organ- 
ization qu'elle  avait  apportee  en  venant  au  monde.^  Plotinus  was  fre- 
quently troubled  with  colic.^  Suso  shows  signs  of  nervous  instability 
before  what  he  considers  his  definitely  religious  life  began.  While  but 
a  schoolboy  in  Cologne  when  his  mother  died  he  had  a  vision  of  her  in 
which  she  told  him  that  she  was  not  really  dead  but  gone  from  the  world, 
and  "kissed  him  on  the  mouth,  blessed  him,  and  vanished."^  Again  as 
a  lad  from  thirteen  to  eighteen  years  of  age  he  experienced  "spiritual 

^  Baron  von  Hiigel,  The  Mystical  Element  of  Religion,  Vol.  II,  Chap.  IX. 

3  Confessions  of  Al  Ghazzali,  p.  44,  Wisdom  of  the  East  Series,  New  York,  1909. 

*  Bonaventura's  Life  of  St.  Francis,  Chaps.  I  and  VI. 

'  Quoted  in  Delacroix's  Etiides  d'Histoire  et  de  Psychologic  du  Mysticisme,  p.  118, 
from  Guerrier. 

'  See  Introduction  to  Taylor's  Select  Works  of  Plotinus. 

''  Rufus  Jones,  Studies  in  Mystical  Religion,  p.  282. 


CONCLUSION  75 

visions"  in  the  Dominican  monastery  at  Constance,  before  he  received 
his  "conversion  experience."^  These  are  among  the  great  names  of 
mysticism.  The  cases  multiply  when  we  consider  the  lesser  mystics. 
In  her  recent  volume  Religious  Confessions  and  Confessants,  Anna  Robe- 
son Burr  has  cited  many  more  than  we  have  space  to  repeat  here.  We 
quote  but  a  few.  "Angela  da  Foligno  mentions  intense  bodily  suffering 
after  she  becomes  a  recluse.     'Never  am  I  without  pain,  continually  am 

I  weak  and  frail I  am  obliged  to  be  always  lying  down. 

.     .     .     .     My  members  are  twisted also  am  I  unable  to 

take  sufl&cient  food.'  Margaret  Ebnerin,  of  the  Gottesfreunde,  notes 
her  own  intolerable  suffering  when  meditating  on  the  Passion.  Blood 
poured  out  of  her  mouth  and  nose;  she  remained  comatose.  Pain  in  the 
head  and  trembling  were  other  symptoms  of  this  attack  which  was  sud- 
denly cured  on  an  Easter  Sunday.    The  nun  Veronique  Giuliani  had  a 

similar  attack,  the  pain  lasting  for  over  twelve  years The 

mystical  abbess,  Maria  d'Agreda,  was  as  a  child  subject  to  great  varia- 
tions of  mood.  When  she  became  a  visionary,  she  suffered  intensely; 
her  body,  she  says,  'was  weak  and  broken' An  obscure  ill- 
ness afflicted  A.  C.^Emmerich  at  the  age  of  fourteen,  and  she  had  several 
visions.  As  these  grew  more  frequent  her  health  steadily  declined. 
.  .  .  .  Hildegarde  of  Bingen  notes  many  illnesses,  by  which  she 
was  beaten  and  overwhelmed,  'even  from  my  mother's  breast.'  After 
her  fourteenth  year  she  grew  stronger  till  middle  age,  when  she  seems  to 
have  suffered  an  inflammation  followed  by  catalepsy;  during  ecstasy  her 
'veins  and  flesh  dry  up,'  and  she  took  to  her  bed.  She  had  her  first 
visions  at  three,  at  eight  had  others  and  took  the  vows;  at  fifteen  they 

became  frequent Bunyan's  tumults  and  melancholies  are 

intermittent,  and  he  often  connects  them  with  'weakness  in  the  outer 
man.'  '"^ 

Not  to  raise  the  question  as  to  whether  or  not  such  facts  as  these 
prove  mysticism  to  be  a  pathological  phenomenon,  we  mean  to  point  out 
here  that  the  mystics  are  determined  to  an  unusual  mode  of  reaction 
upon  their  environment  by  a  nervous  organization  which  is  either  con- 
genitally  extraordinary  or  else  made  so  by  subsequent  austerities  or  ill- 
health.  The  result,  or  perhaps  we  should  say,  the  concomitant,  of  such 
physiological  conditions  is  on  the  psychological  side  a  sensitivity  and 
awareness  of  the  operations  and  processes  of  the  mental  life,  which 

''Ibid. 

'  Burr,  Anna  Robeson,  Religious  Confessions  and  Confessants,  Boston  and  New 
York,  1914,  pp.  196-200. 


76  A  PSYCHOLOGICAL  INTERPRETATION  OF  MYSTICISM 

becomes  a  habit  of  almost  constant  introspection.  Because  the  mental 
machinery  does  not  move  smoothly  and  normally  it  attracts  attention 
to  itself:  hence  the  interest  in  the  inner  rather  than  the  outer  world 
which  we  mentioned  in  our  first  chapter  as  being  an  essential  phase  of 
the  mystic's  temperament;  hence  also  the  mystic's  responsiveness  to 
ideas  rather  than  to  the  objective  environment.  He  responds  more 
readily  to  the  thought  world  which  his  social  group  expresses  than  to 
his  material  surroundings. 

But  mere  responsiveness  and  tendency  to  introspection  are  not 
enough  in  themselves  to  determine  that  the  reaction  will  be  a  mystical 
one.  The  artists  and  poets  and  men  of  genius  of  all  kinds  may  and  do 
share  an  enhanced  sensitivity  of  reaction  with  the  mystics  and  exhibit 
more  or  less  of  unstable  neural  organization.  Their  degree  of  sensitivity 
may  be  high  or  low  at  the  outset  and  increase  with  the  development  of 
technique,  and,  for  cases  of  even  this  are  not  wanting,  sometimes  with 
illness.  But  the  factor  which  really  sets  the  type  of  character,  which 
determines  that  one  shall  be  a  mystic  rather  than  a  poet  or  philosopher 
is  the  environment.  Whenever  we  have  an  environment  which  empha- 
sizes in  the  consciousness  of  the  individual  the  symbol  of  highest  value 
as  an  object  to  be  experienced  by  immediate  contact  we  have  an  envir- 
onment which  calls  forth  the  mystical  reaction.  And  not  only  does  the 
environment  summon  the  system  of  reactions  which  we  call  mystical 
but  it  determines  as  well  what  the  type  of  mystical  reactions  shall  be. 
When  the  sensitive  individual  finds  himself  confronted  with  a  milieu 
which  places  all  its  values  in  a  transcendent  deity  which  must  be  sought 
by  turning  away  from  the  world  of  ordinary  phenomena  we  have  the 
mysticism  of  the  classic  Medieval  type,  striving  ceaselessly  after  the 
beatific  vision  and  finding  in  the  visions  and  voices  and  other  automatic 
phenomena,  resulting  from  the  subconscious  response  to  their  strivings, 
confirmations  of  the  conceptions  of  ultimate  value  which  they  have 
learned.  When  the  environment  stresses  attainment  of  value  from  some 
single  climactic  experience  of  contact  with  a  divinity  still  set  over  against 
the  world,  as  was  the  case  of  the  Port  Royal  conceptions,  we  have  the 
mysticism  of  Pascal  and  Angelique  Arnauld.  Most  of  our  thought 
about  mysticism  has  had  reference  to  these  types.  But  it  is  noteworthy 
that  the  modern  environment  with  its  emphasis  upon  immanental  con- 
ceptions has  called  forth  two  such  modern  mystics  as  Walt  Whitman 
and  Maurice  Maeterlinck,  who  find  their  immediate  contact  with  highest 
value  in  the  world  of  everyday  surroundings.  In  fact,  one  reason  why 
it  has  been  hard  to  give  any  satisfactory  delineation  of  various  types  of 


CONCLUSION  77 

mysticism  is  that  the  mystical  experience  may  vary  almost  as  indefinitely 
as  the  varieties  of  environment  in  which  it  is  called  out.  And  this  is 
why,  also,  the  mystic  cannot  give  us  any  one  abiding  truth.  Mysticism 
is  but  the  sensitive  reaction  to  conceptions  of  highest  value  already 
existing  in  the  social  environment.  So  far  as  the  individual  can  seem 
to  identify  himself  with  these,  either  in  thought  or  in  some  action,  he 
catches  the  mystic  thrill,  howsoever  different  they  may  be  from  the 
highest  value  of  some  other  social  group.  "Whatever  else  the  mystics 
give  us,"  says  Pollock,  "it  will  not  be  positive  confirmation  of  any  one 
dogmatic  system.  Romanists  and  Protestants,  Hindus  and  Moslems  are 
of  the  company,  and  within  each  faith  divers  degrees  of  orthodoxy  and 
manifest  or  suspected  heterodoxy  are  represented.  Plotinus  at  one  end 
and  WilHam  James  at  the  other  cannot  be  ruled  out  because  one  of  them 
was  a  heathen  Neo-Platonist  and  the  other  a  Christian  so  eccentric  as  to 
refuse  to  be  fitted  into  any  system  whatever.  The  only  inference  we 
can  draw  is  that  every  one  of  the  seers  expressed  his  insight,  naturally 
and  inevitably,  in  a  form  conditioned  by  the  terms  and  symbols  which 
were  familiar  to  him."^*' 

Let  us  look  once  more  at  the  way  in  which  the  Medieval  environment 
produced  its  type  of  mystic.  Without  going  into  the  details  of  the  sur- 
roundings of  each  one  of  the  Medieval  mystics  we  may  mention  some 
of  the  broad  features  of  the  civilization  of  the  Middle  Ages  which  tended 
naturally  to  produce  experiences  like  those  of  Suso,  St.  Francis,  St. 
Teresa  and  others  of  their  class. 

There  was  first  of  all  the  conceptions  of  the  residence  of  value  in  a 
transcendental  realm  and  the  necessity  of  negating  the  ordinary  rela- 
tionships of  Hfe  in  order  to  attain  to  experience  of  this  value.  We  have 
already  set  these  forth  in  our  first  chapter  and  will  not  enlarge  upon  them 
further  than  to  remark  that  they  were  the  core  of  the  Medieval  con- 
sciousness. Then  there  was  the  monastic  system  founded  upon  these 
conceptions.  This  institution  brought  the  powerful  influence  of  social 
pressure  to  bear  upon  the  individual  to  accept  its  ideals  and  to  strive 
in  accordance  with  them.  The  inmates  of  the  monasteries  and  nun- 
neries were  constantly  stimulating  one  another  to  other-worldly  aspira- 
tions and  this -world  abandonment,  through  the  confessional,  by  per- 
sonal example,  appreciation  and  exchange  of  experiences,  etc.  Further, 
there  was  the  fact  that  hfe  outside  monastic  walls  was  frequently  hard, 
barbaric  and  unsatisfying,  especially  to  sensitive  individuals  with  no 

1°  Pollock,  Sir  Frederick,  The  Relation  of  Mystic  Experience  to  Philosophy, 
Hibbert  Journal,  October,  1913. 


78  A  PSYCHOLOGICAL  INTERPRETATION  OF  MYSTICISM 

relish  for  the  brutality  of  military  pursuits.  This  fact  enabled  them  to 
turn  all  the  more  readily  to  the  ideals  of  the  cloister.  With  all  this  load 
of  social  and  other  pressure  behind  him,  it  is  not  surprising  that  the 
individual  abandoned  himself,  even  extravagantly,  to  the  socially  sug- 
gested religious  practices,  which,  by  their  very  nature,  could  result  only 
in  the  auto-hypnosis  of  the  ecstasy  and  rapture.  The  Medieval  mystic 
is  really  the  outcome  of  the  placement  of  ideal  value  by  the  Medieval 
social  consciousness. 

This  consideration  of  the  part  played  by  the  environment  in  the 
mystical  experience  brings  us  to  the  question  of  the  relation  of  the  classic 
mystics  to  ourselves.  If  we  would  experience  value  as  deeply  as  they, 
if  we  too  would  have  some  sense  of  direct  encounter  with  measureless 
worth  must  we  practice  the  same  technique  as  they  and  resort  to  the 
lonely  cell,  the  hair  shirt,  and  physical  mortification?  The  answer  is 
"Decidedly  not."  For  such  a  procedure  would  involve  an  attitude  the 
very  reverse  of  theirs,  disloyalty  namely,  to  the  ideals  of  our  own  time 
and  place.  Our  age  no  longer  looks  upon  matter  and  the  ordinary  rela- 
tionships of  life  as  evil.  Value  is  not  isolated  in  a  transcendent  world 
but  inwoven  with  the  here  and  now  at  its  best.  It  is  by  searching  as 
earnestly  for  the  best  in  our  own  time  and  living  as  deeply  and  sincerely 
into  it  as  they  did  with  reference  to  the  ideal  value  of  their  time  that  we 
truly  lay  hold  of  the  principle  upon  which  they  acted.  We  are  not 
likely  to  have  experiences  so  intense  as  theirs  because  our  value  is  spread 
out,  so  to  speak,  over  a  wider  area  of  human  interests  and  is  not  all 
concentrated  upon  the  one  point  of  private  devotion,  but  it  is  apt  to 
move  us  more  simply  and  often,  perhaps,  at  the  end  of  a  duty  done,  in 
the  presence  of  some  esthetic  phase  of  the  world  in  which  we  move,  or  in 
the  consideration  of  some  new  relation  in  the  midst  of  its  endless  unfold- 
ments.  It  is,  in  fact,  in  just  such  touches  as  these  that  we  are  aware  of 
our  kinship  to  the  mystics  in  their  experiences  of  exaltation.  To  give 
but  one  illustration  we  may  show  by  a  quotation  from  Bertrand  Russell 
the  way  in  which  the  modern  mind  experiences  its  mystical  moment  in 
values  of  truth  and  beauty.  "Mathematics,"  he  says,  "rightly  viewed, 
possesses  not  only  truth,  but  supreme  beauty — a  beauty  cold  and 
austere,  like  that  of  sculpture,  without  the  gorgeous  trappings  of  paint- 
ing or  music,  yet  sublimely  pure  and  capable  of  a  stern  perfection  such  as 
only  the  greatest  art  can  show.  The  true  spirit  of  deHght,  the  exalta- 
tion, the  sense  of  being  more  than  man,  which  is  the  touchstone  of  the 
highest  excellence,  is  to  be  found  in  mathematics  as  surely  as  in  poetry."^^ 

"  Russell,  Bertrand,  The  Study  of  Mathematics,  in  Philosophical  Essays,  p.  73. 


CONCLUSION  79 

The  "sense  of  being  more  than  man"  is  precisely  the  experience  for 
which  the  mystic  has  always  striven,  but  in  times  when  the  conception 
of  transcendence  reigned  it  could  not  be  found  springing  up  within  the 
pale  of  the  ordinary  human  interests.  Pascal  was  also  acquainted  with 
the  attractions  of  mathematics  but  he  would  not  have  admitted  that 
this  experience  brought  one  in  contact  with  "highest  excellence"  or 
value.  And  in  this  he  shows  his  relationship  to  an  earlier  type  of  social 
consciousness.  The  goodness  of  common  concerns,  according  to  the 
mystics  produced  by  the  older  social  consciousness,  is  antagonistic  to  the 
goodness  of  the  transcendent  world  of  true  values.  But  according  to  the 
modern  mystic  our  highest  values  must  be  experienced  within  the  con- 
crete goodnesses  of  common  concerns  themselves.  There  only  can  they 
be  really  apprehended.  We  see  this  attitude  most  plainly  in  the  thought 
of  Maurice  Maeterlinck,  which  John  Dewey  has  summarized  as  follows: 
"The  natural  kinship  of  man's  intellectual  and  moral  life  with  nature, 
naturalistically  reported  and  accepted;  the  mutual  interpretation  of 
unconscious  instinct,  blind  passion,  and  conscious  luminous  reason,  the 
unfathomable  and  equable  character  of  our  immediate,  ordinary,  com- 
monplace experiences,  so  that  our  experience  has  no  goal  save  itself — 
these  ideas  define  Maeterlinck's  interpretation  of  life."^^  Such  is  the 
kind  of  mysticism  which  the  thought  milieu  of  today  tends  to  evoke. 
The  more  sensitive  spirits  of  our  time  will  not  respond  with  trances  and 
raptures,  but  with  a  calm  deep  sense  of  the  dignity  and  joy  of  human  life. 

But  if  sensitivity  makes  the  individual  responsive  to  the  social  envi- 
ronment, and  if  the  latter  determines  what,  in  the  main,  he  shall  be,  the 
instincts  acting  under  the  pressure  of  the  social  environment  set  the 
problem  which  the  individual  must  solve  in  order  to  attain  to  his  imme- 
diate contact  with  the  ideal  value.  The  instincts  must  be  organized 
with  reference  to  the  values  prized  by  the  social  consciousness.  They 
enable  us  to  appreciate  many  phases  of  the  development  of  the  mystical 
life  which  would  be  otherwise  dark.  We  have  noted  the  role  played  by 
the  sexual  instinct  in  the  development  of  St.  Teresa's  mysticism.  Her 
long  struggle  for  unification  was  fundamentally  an  effort  to  relate  this 
tendency  to  her  transcendent  ideal.  The  same  problem  seems  to  he 
at  the  base  of  the  savage  austerities  of  Suso,  undertaken,  he  tells  us,  in 
order  to  "conquer  the  lively  nature  of  his  youth."  The  unhappy  mar- 
ried life  of  Catherine  of  Genoa  and  Madame  Guyon  undoubtedly  played 
a  fundamental  part  in  turning  their  attention  into  mystical  channels. 
The  fact  that  the  control,  or  perhaps  we  should  say  the  re-relating,  of 

^^Hibhert  Journal,  Vol.  9, 1910-11,  p.  765. 


80  A  PSYCHOLOGICAL  INTERPRETATION  OF  MYSTICISM 

the  sexual  instinct  has  entered  into  the  development  of  the  mysticism  of 
some  individuals  as  a  problem  is  doubtless  accountable  for  the  extreme 
view  occasionally  expressed  that  mysticism  is  wholly  explicable  in  terms 
of  the  repression  of  that  instinct.  Thus  we  have  Leon  Winiarsky  remark- 
ing that  in  mysticism  "II  est  certain  que  nous  avons  ici  affaire  a  la  cor- 
ruption   du    penchant    sexuel Le    besoin    non    satisfait, 

arrete  se  transforme  en  toute  une  serie  de  phenomenes  psychiques  souvent 
morbides,  appeles  amour"^^  But  such  a  view  attempts  to  simplify  too 
much  the  phenomenon  of  mysticism.  It  fails  to  account  for  those  cases, 
such  as  Boehme's,  e.  g.,  in  which  a  happy  marriage  relationship  seems 
in  no  way  to  abate  the  mystical  experiences.  Boehme's  most  brilliant 
illuminations  came  to  him  after  his  marriage.  And  he  died  the  father 
of  four  sons  and  two  daughters.^^ 

The  fact  is,  that  in  Boehme's  case  as  well  as  in  the  cases  of  Plotinus 
and  Eckart  and  others  who  fall  into  a  class  of  what  might  be  called 
philosophical  or  intellectual  mystics  we  have  another  instinct  to  the  fore 
entirely,  viz.,  that  of  curiosity.  These  men  while  repeating  with  all  the 
mystics  that  the  final  experience  of  highest  value  is  essentially  indescrib- 
able in  intellectual  terms  yet  display  a  marvelous  ingenuity  in  at  least 
relating  all  the  processes  of  life  to  this  experience  in  a  rational  fashion. 
They  could  not  rest  satisfied  without  finding  out  so  far  as  possible  what 
might  be  the  relation  of  their  highest  value  to  all  phases  of  their  experi- 
ence. If  they  virtually  preach  that  our  tendency  to  investigate  should 
not  be  exercised  upon  the  immediate  world  of  sense  objects,  as  we  find 
them  doing  in  their  doctrine  of  complete  disregard  of  the  things  of  the 
world,  they  yet  show  by  their  works  that  it  still  operated  in  them  to  the 
extent  of  a  profound  scrutinizing  of  their  conception  of  the  source  of  all 
worth.  It  is  surprising  how  much  Plotinus  and  Boehme  have  to  say 
in  their  system  concerning  what  is  essentially  inexplicable.  The  problems 
of  those  mystics  who  bring  with  them  a  good  native  endowment  of  the 
instinct  of  curiosity  are  primarily  intellectual.  As  we  have  shown,  the 
cataclysmic  character  of  Pascal's  mystical  experience  was  partially  due 
to  his  difficulty  in  squaring  the  values  upheld  by  Jansenism  with  his 
intellectual  pursuits  in  other  than  religious  lines. 

Of  course,  we  must  avoid  oversimplification  in  this  matter.  We  must 
remember  that  the  factor  of  environment  operates  closely  with  the 
instincts.     Thus  while  the  instinct  of  curiosity  acts  selectively  to  turn 

^'  Essai  sur  la  Mecanique  Sociale,  Revue  PhUosophique,  Vol.  45,  April,  1898. 

"  See  the  biographical  introduction  to  The  Signature  of  All  r/(/«g5,  in  Everyman's 
Library. 


CONCLUSION  81 

the  individual's  attention  to  the  intellectual  phase  of  the  mystical  experi- 
ence, the  resulting  influence  of  the  selected  intellectual  environment — 
monastic  school,  books  read,  etc.,  e.  g. — acts  in  turn  to  further  stimulate 
the  instinct  of  curiosity.  Again  Pascal's  case  illustrated  well  the  fact 
that  in  the  life  of  any  one  individual  mystic  the  instincts  operate,  not 
separately  but  in  combination,  building  up  systems  of  reaction  in  response 
to  special  phases  of  the  environment.  Most  often  it  is  these  complexes 
of  instinctive  reactions  which  give  the  mystics,  especially  the  Medieval 
mystics  their  trouble.  In  the  days  when  the  highest  ideal  values  rested 
in  a  transcendent  object,  the  self  which  had  to  be  surrendered,  or  broken 
up  and  reorganized  with  reference  to  the  ideal  was  the  self  which  con- 
sisted in  a  system  of  reactions  directed  upon  some  object  which  was 
held  to  be  definitely  at  variance  with  the  ultimate  ideal.  As  the  Medie- 
val mystic  could  not  help  coming  in  contact  with  the  secular  world  in 
some  form  during  childhood  and  youth,  they  always  discovered  some 
self  to  combat  which  such  contact  evoked.  Accordingly  while  we  mxay 
find  one  instinct  which  plays  a  major  part  in  setting  the  problem  of  the 
individual  mystic  we  must  always  expect  to  find  it  functioning  in  com- 
bination with  other  instincts. 

We  have  now  reached  the  end  of  our  study.  We  have  attempted 
to  interpret  mysticism  throughout  these  pages  in  terms  of  processes 
which  we  already  know.  We  have  taken  the  position  that  mysticism 
arises  from  the  interaction  of  the  three  great  factors  of  sensitivity,  social 
environment,  and  the  normal  instincts.  Whether  or  not  our  hypothesis 
has  been  sustained  by  the  course  of  the  discussion  must  be  decided  by 
the  reader.  Those  who  are  acquainted  with  the  characteristics  of  mys- 
ticism as  pointed  out  by  Coe,  Leuba  and  James  may  feel  inclined  to 
question  whether  our  categories  are  sufficient  to  do  full  explanatory 
justice  to  the  phenomenon.  But  we  venture  to  think  that  what  we 
have  said  is  not  inconsistent  with  the  analyses  of  these  men.  We  have 
made  use  of  the  Jamesian  conception  of  the  trans-marginal  origin  of  the 
mystical  revelations,  but  we  have  tried  to  show  in  addition  that  behind 
the  subconscious  contents  is,  not  the  workings  of  a  mysterious  "instinct 
for  transcendence,"  which  Miss  Underbill  postulates,  but  the  stimula- 
tions of  the  vast  encircling  world  of  material  and  social  beings.  That  is 
to  say,  our  assumption  has  been  that  had  we  all  the  data  in  hand  con- 
cerning any  one  mystical  experience  we  should  be  able  to  trace  the  ele- 
ments of  the  complex  result  to  specific  impressions  made  by  the  milieu 
upon  the  sensitive  organism.  We  have  agreed  all  along  with  Professor 
Leuba  that  the  mystics  share  with  the  rest  of  mankind  the  usual  outfit 


82  A  PSYCHOLOGICAL  INTERPRETATION  OF  MYSTICISM 

of  human  instincts,  and  we  have  noted  with  him  the  signs  of  the  opera- 
tions of  the  sexual  instinct  in  the  experience  of  St.  Teresa,  but  we  have 
traced  its  influence  more  definitely,  we  believe,  in  the  struggle  leading 
up  to  the  stage  of  visions,  revelations  and  raptures.  Leuba  was  more 
concerned  to  make  out  his  case  from  the  character  of  the  experiences 
which  were  the  outcome  of  the  struggle.  Our  conception,  likewise,  of  the 
enhanced  sensitivity  of  the  mystic  is  in  harmony  with  Professor  Coe's 
view  that  the  mystic  is  unusually  suggestible  and  that  his  suggestibility 
leads  him  to  give  interpretations  of  experience  the  force  of  present 
experiences.  These  interpretations  of  experience,  we  also  hold  with 
Professor  Coe,  come  from  the  social  environment. 
There  arise  two  thoughts  in  conclusion. 

1.  In  the  first  place  we  are  led  to  feel  that  we  may  not  look  to  mys- 
ticism for  the  sure  revelation  of  the  transcendent  world  which  the  his- 
torical mystics  have  always  claimed  as  a  definite  attainment.  Since  their 
comprehension  of  value  is  always  received  from  the  social  consciousness 
of  their  time  they  cannot  give  us  any  better  statement  in  cognitive  terms 
of  that  value  than  some  clear-minded  thinker  might  give  us  who  was  not 
noted  for  any  mystical  experience.  At  best  the  mystic  can  only  say 
that  it  is  rather  than  what  it  is.  Such  a  confident  assertion  may  and  does 
have  the  effect  on  contemporaries  of  the  mystic  of  arousing  enthusiasm 
for  the  values  prized  in  their  day  and  even  releases  the  tendencies  to 
emulation.  For  such  a  service  each  generation  must  be  grateful  to  its 
mystical  leaders.  In  so  far  as  the  values  are  vital  the  message  of  the 
mystic  is  a  true  inspiration  to  his  time.  But  in  so  far  as  the  conscious- 
ness of  the  mystic  is  moulded  by  a  past  or  passing  social  order  as  was 
undoubtedly  the  case  with  Neo-Platonism  and  in  the  later  Middle  Ages 
and,  in  some  quarters,  even  today,  the  influence  of  the  mystic  may  be 
actually  retarding  and  retrogressive.  His  sensitivity  then  makes 
unrealities  real.  His  strong  certainty  simply  consecrates  a  view  not 
really  expressive  of  the  true  trend  of  his  time.  For  this  reason  the  world 
of  values  outside  the  normal  relationships  of  human  life  which  the 
Medieval  mystics  reported  as  experienced  is  not  accepted  by  us  today. 
It  was  based  on  a  social  consciousness  essentially  foreign  to  our  own. 
We  may  not  expect,  therefore,  a  recrudescence  of  this  type  of  mysticism 
to  maintain  itself  long  before  such  a  mysticism  as  that  represented  by 
Maeterhnck  and  Whitman. 

2.  Secondly,  we  see  that  the  point  of  marvel  in  the  mystical  experi- 
ence is  not  in  the  place  where  the  mystic  thought  it  was.  Those  experi- 
ences which  proved  the  supernatural  character  of  his  revelation  to  the 


CONCLUSION 


83 


mystic  are  now  seen  but  to  indicate  the  operation  of  normal  processes 
under  somewhat  special  conditions.  Visions,  voices,  trances  and  ecsta- 
sies have  all  been  studied  in  recent  times.  It  has  been  found  that  they 
can  be  re-instated  experimentally  under  conditions  of  hypnosis  and  that 
they  occur  spontaneously  under  other  than  religious  or  mystical  condi- 
tions. We  can  no  longer  beUeve  that  they  necessarily  designate  any 
special  divine  favor.  The  wonder  to  the  modern  mind  must  lie  in  the 
perpetual  marvel  of  the  normal  processes  of  life  themselves  which  show  us 
such  remarkable  plasticity  and  complexity.  We  wonder  and  are  im- 
pressed at  the  intricate  interaction  of  environment  and  temperament 
and  instinct.  They  open  up  to  us  indefinite  vistas  of  research.  Though 
they  may  present  us  with  a  more  sober,  less  poetical  version  of  the  mys- 
tical experience,  they  yet  call  forth  our  profound  respect  for  human 
nature  and  will,  if  understood  in  something  of  their  enormous  range  of 
implication,  not  destroy  the  sense  of  the  mystery  of  existence  but  lay 
for  it  a  far  broader,  deeper  foundation. 


Q^      UNION      -% 
THEOLOGICAL 


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BIBLIOGRAPHY  85 

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iiiii 


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